NBC News senior reporter Ben Collins said Wednesday that supporters of former President Donald Trump did not show up to the polls on Election Day because they want to “get violent.”
Collins suggested that Trump-endorsed Republican candidates underperformed in the midterm elections because the “Trump base” and those who “planned the insurrection” want to be violent instead of voting.
“There’s a large portion — So, like, the people who planned the insurrection still have their forum, and they gave up on democracy a long time ago, and by the way, we should have factored this in a little bit more before people started voting, I think” Collins said on MSNBC’s “Katy Tur Reports.”
“There’s a large section of the Trump base that simply does not want to vote anymore, they just want to get violent, and maybe those people didn’t show up,” he continued.
MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow made a similar accusation Tuesday night, claiming that the “far-right” was using its “open carry privilege” to intimidate political opponents. (RELATED: ‘How You Lose Your Democracy’: NBC’s Ben Collins Blames Elon Musk For The Viral ‘Lie’ About Paul Pelosi Attack)
The election results for both chambers of Congress are still up in the air after the overwhelming Republican victory most pollsters predicted failed to materialize. Republicans are on track to regain control of the House, having won 206 seats as of 3:30 p.m. Wednesday, according to The New York Times. The party needs 218 seats to achieve a majority.
The parties are currently tied with 48 seats in the Senate. Key races in Georgia, Arizona and Nevada are still too close to call, as is the race between Alaska Republicans Kelly Tshibaka and Sen. Lisa Murkowski.
The results appear to be a major blow for Republicans, who fell far short of pollsters’ predictions. Real Clear Politics predicted that Republicans would win Senate races in Pennsylvania and New Hampshire, both of which the GOP lost. On the House side, CNN senior data reporter Harry Enten predicted in June hat Republicans were in the “best position” to win seats in over 80 years.
The key issues pertaining to voters were the economy and crime, according to several surveys. Abortion and upholding democracy, the two issues Democrats ran on, did not appear to gain momentum among voters ahead of the midterms.
The issue of abortion, however, ended up being a bigger contributor to Democratic turnout that most forecasters expected. An exit poll from Edison Research found that about six of ten voters said they were “dissatisfied or angry” about the June 24 Supreme Court ruling, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which returned the issue of abortion to the states, Reuters reported.