Republican candidate in critical Iowa race up 7 points over opponent
WASHINGTON (CNN) -
Republicans woke up Sunday to a wave of new polls that showed their Senate candidates surging ahead in key states -- including one in Iowa that looked particularly grim for Democrats -- giving the GOP a jolt of enthusiasm going into the 2014 campaign cycle's final hours.
Two days from the midterm election, Washington's political class was buzzing around news that Iowa GOP Senate hopeful Joni Ernst was 7 percentage points up in a Des Moines Register poll, and Republican candidates and surrogates popped up on the Sunday news shows, gleeful about their prospects.
"I think the wind is at our back," Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul said on CNN's "State of the Union." He added that Republicans will "in all likelihood" win control of the Senate and added: "I think people are ready for new leadership."
Fueling the Republicans' optimism was a Register poll that showed Ernst leading Democrat Bruce Braley, 51% to 44% -- prompting pollster J. Ann Selzer to tell the newspaper that "this race looks like it's decided."
Hours before the poll's release, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid spelled out what a loss in the Hawkeye State would mean for Democrats.
"Iowa is critical. There's no other way to say it," Reid said Saturday in a conference call with the Progressive Change Campaign Committee.
"Joni Ernst would mean --- coming to the United States Senate --- that Mitch McConnell would be leader of the United States Senate, who agrees with her on everything," he said, according to Politico.
And it wasn't just Iowa that had good news for Republicans. A new set of NBC News/Marist polls unveiled Sunday morning gave Republicans boosts in three key Senate races -- including McConnell's in Kentucky, as well as Georgia, where Democrats had hoped to pickup a seat, and Louisiana, where Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu is in a tough race for her political career.
Those incumbent Senate Democrats have spent the fall trying to distance themselves from President Barack Obama, whose floundering state-level approval ratings have been a drag for his party down the ticket as Republicans tie their opponents to the commander-in-chief every chance they get.
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Republican candidate in critical Iowa race up 7 points over opponent