CNN Polling Chief Sticks Knife In Democrats ‘Playing With Fire By Boosting MAGA Loons’ Narrative — And Twists It

CNN polling chief Harry Enten dismantled the narrative that Democrats were “playing with fire” by “boosting MAGA lunatics” in GOP primaries with an examination of Tuesday night’s election results.

Democrats have spent millions of dollars to “boost” fringe MAGA candidates in primaries — by running attack ads highlighting their similarities or support of former President Donald Trump — in order to select weaker general election opponents for their own nominees. Republicans and media figures — particularly on CNN — have been relentless in criticizing the practice.

But on Wednesday morning’s edition of CNN This Morning, Don Lemon and co-anchors Kaitlan Collins and Poppy Harlow continued the midterms coverage with big boards and panels, including Enten’s analysis of how those races turned out:

DON LEMON: So we have talked a lot about Democrats strategy of funding election deniers here. Harry Enten, did that pay off?

HARRY ENTEN: I think it did. If you look across the board, we look at a bunch of races where Democrats decided to fund these election deniers and they pretty much went all in and undefeated.

Let’s start in Pennsylvania, Governor. Right, which I think is one of the marquee races. Look at this margin. Josh Shapiro over Doug Mastriano nearly a 13 point margin, but it’s not the only one.

Let’s go to Michigan three. Michigan three, I think is a fascinating race because Peter Meijer was the Republican incumbent there and he, of course, voted to impeach Donald Trump. And there was a lot of people thinking, how could you do that? How could you basically get at this guy who is kind of working towards the middle? But it seemed to pay off because look at this. John Gibbs, the Republican candidate, losing by 13 percentage points.

Let’s go to New Hampshire and the New Hampshire Senate race. This is another one. Look at this margin, Maggie Hassan, up by ten points! I honestly thought this race was going to be close to some of the late polls had it close. It wasn’t close at all. Maggie Hassan with a double digit victory.

Let’s go to the one race where perhaps it didn’t necessarily work as well. And that is in the Arizona governor’s race where we have not called anyone, Kari Lake is only about two points behind Katie Hobbs with a bunch of votes that get counted. But that was really the exception to the rule.

So let’s go back to New Hampshire, the second District there. This is, again, a race that just is not close at all. Look at Annie Kuster. I’m from that district or I once lived in that district, I should say, went to college in Dartmouth. And you can see right here, Annie Kuster with a large lead over Robert Burns, double digits yet again.

Let’s go down to Maryland governor’s race, because this is a race in which, you know, Maryland’s a very blue state. But obviously Larry Hogan, the incumbent Republican governor, much more towards the middle. Republicans decide to go in a different direction with Dan Cox. Look at this margin. Wes Moore an over 20 point margin.

Finally, let’s shoot over to the Midwest. We’ll go over to the Illinois gubernatorial race. And what we see here is, again, a very wide margin. And in that race, J.B. Pritzker. Double digit margin over Darren Bailey. They basically picked Bailey out of the Republican field. It seemed to pay off.

So across the board, it does seem that the Democratic strategy worked despite a lot of critics, especially those in some of the media. Don.

DON LEMON: Yeah, there was a lot of consternation about that. Thank you very much, Harry Enten.

Watch above via CNN This Morning.