RNC Chairman Reince Priebus expressed confidence on Sunday that his party would perform well in House, Senate, and gubernatorial races across the country, highlighting early voting data as evidence of a Republican advantage in Senate battlegrounds on ABC’s "This Week."
"Our ground game is whipping [the Democratic Party’s] ground game. If you look at Colorado, we're up by 105,000 votes right now. Cory Gardner is tied with women with Mark Udall. We're winning Hispanic voters in Colorado. We're whipping them in Arkansas. We are at a dead even early vote right now in Iowa. We were down by 21,000 votes in Iowa in the early vote in 2010. Joni Ernst is up by 7, according to ‘The Des Moines Register’ yesterday."
"We're winning," Priebus continued, "in Montana, West Virginia, South Dakota. I haven't even talked about Alaska, Louisiana. And then we're going to see what's going to happen in North Carolina and New Hampshire."
Republicans need a net gain of six seats to take control of the Senate, and ten seats currently held by Democrats are considered either toss ups or likely Republican pick ups.
Analysts on all five Sunday shows predicted that Republicans would take control of the Senate. However, they said it would likely be a referendum against President Obama rather than a vote of approval for Republicans.
"The dominos never just split down the middle. They all go one way or the other. I think Republicans are going to win the lion's share of the really close [races], but keep in mind these are home games for Republicans," analyst Charlie Cook, of the Cook Political Report, said on NBC’s "Meet the Press."
"Six seats that Romney won by fourteen points or more, and those are probably the first six Democratic seats to go over the side."
Cook’s colleague, Amy Walter, similarly pointed to the general environment as a key factor in the cycle.
"It’s an anti-establishment year, and right now the establishment is the Democratic Party. The president is a Democrat. People are frustrated with the direction that he’s taking the country and Democrats are the incumbent party in most of these Senate seats so if you’re frustrated ... and that’s the second most important issue for voters, breaking the gridlock in Washington. Yes, Republicans got some of the blame, but again when you’re the party in charge you get most of that blame."
The Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol told ABC’s "This Week" that he’s confident Republicans will take control of the Senate, but apprehensive about what comes next.
"What’s worrisome, of course, is that after this [Republicans] have to do two things. Do a good job controlling both of Congress which isn’t easy, and they need to win in 2016, which is a very different thing than winning in 2014."
Republicans have a natural advantage in the 2014 cycle, but they will be defending more seats in 2016—a presidential election, where Democratic demographics turnout in higher numbers during than they do in midterms.
Seventy-two percent of voters disapprove of Republicans in Congress, and Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.) recently said on a campaign stop that the Republican brand "sucks" and needs work.
Priebus brushed off the criticisms.
"Well, what [Paul] said is that we're actually on the right track and actually we're doing a lot of the things that we should be doing, which is engaging Hispanic voters, black voters, Asian voters, talking to women across the country, not just for four months before an election, but for four years. The things I've been talking about and, by the way, leading the way on in our party for the last two years."
"I do think if you've been looking at the polls," Priebus added, "we're winning with women in Kentucky, actually, McConnell is winning with women against Alison Grimes. Cotton is winning with women against Mark Pryor in Arkansas. So what Rand Paul is saying is what I've been saying, which is we have spent way too long as a national party showing up at the end and we've got to do better."
Republicans made dramatic changes to their ground game after the 2012 election, and many committee staffers, publicly and privately, point to those improvements as evidence that they will see success in 2014 and 2016.