Pollster Stephen Kent predicted a red wave election in an appearance on FOX News with fellow pollster Mark Penn on the Friday broadcast of 'Special Report' with host Bret Baier. <blockquote>STEPHEN KENT: Something that just a month ago we were not quite so sure of. You did see a very strong likelihood of a Republican wave, picking up seats that were out of Republicans' reach earlier in the year, but when the Dobbs decision is handed down by the Supreme Court, you see abortion double in salience from 4% most important to an 8% most important issue. And that spooked rightly a lot of Republicans who saw that now they are going to have to defend these seats and chase these seats on social issues, but what happened over the summer is that it has frozen in importance, and Democrats have not been able to raise it to the level of importance as the cost of living in the economy, which combined are the most important issue by the tune of about 36% with voters. This is a huge, huge deal. Something that they have not been able to reverse... I think the mood in the room for the entire country, House Republicans make up for areas in which they have made huge blunders with the quality of their candidates. Now, if I can turn your attention to North Carolina where you have two candidates who are remarkably good, Sherry Beasley on the Democrat side and Ted Budd, the Republican. They sort of embody to me the opposite of the environment in Georgia because when you have two good candidates, nobody is talking about them on a national basis, and there has been very little attention paid to North Carolina for that reason. When personalities are not front and center then the issues are. And Ted Budd is going to be able to probably hold on to the Republican seat that is being vacated right now. Probably by a win of about 1.6 points. It is really sad for Democrats because this used to be a state where they could perform and compete, but it has slipped away from them on everything but governors' races for the past 3 or 4 cycles... I am going to go and bet it is going to surprise us just how much a wave it is for Republicans. I think that there was a moment this year, particularly again with the Dobbs decision where we thought it was going to get away from them, but there are just so many factors, the gas prices, the continued inflation problem, its pushing it right back in their direction, and Democrats have been pouring all of their money on a national basis towards promoting the issue of abortion, and it is just not going to fly. </blockquote>