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Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) speaks at a committee hearing in Washington.
Greg Nash-Pool/Getty Images
  • GOP Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas said on Friday that the party could experience “a bloodbath of Watergate proportions” in the November elections.
  • “If people are going back to work, if they’re optimistic, if they’re positive about the future, we could see a fantastic election,” Cruz said.
  • Cruz was referring to the Watergate scandal, which prompted then-President Richard Nixon to resign from the presidency in 1974, and triggered massive losses for Republicans in the House of Representatives that year, along with several defeats in the Senate.
  • In most of the major battleground states, President Donald Trump is currently trailing Joe Biden in most public polling surveys.
  • Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.

Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, a 2016 GOP presidential candidate and one of the most prominent Republicans in the country, said on Friday that the party could experience “a bloodbath of Watergate proportions” in the November elections.

Cruz, speaking on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” said that the presidential election was unpredictable at the moment.

“I am worried,” Crux said. “It’s volatile, it’s highly volatile…if people are going back to work, if they’re optimistic, if they’re positive about the future, we could see a fantastic election — the president getting reelected with a big margin and Republicans winning both Houses of Congress. I think that’s a real possibility,” Cruz said.

“But I also think if on Election Day people are angry and they’ve given up hope and they’re depressed, which is what [Speaker Nancy] Pelosi and [Senate Minority Leader Chuck] Schumer want them to be, I think it could be a terrible election. I think we could lose the White House and both houses of Congress, that it could be a bloodbath of Watergate proportions.”

Cruz was referring to the Watergate scandal, in which the administration of President Richard Nixon was ensnared in a series of legal and ethical violations. The most infamous incidents of the scandal were the break-in of the Democratic National Committee by GOP operatives, the impeachment hearings that roiled the country, and Nixon’s resignation in 1974. Republicans suffered massive losses in the US House of Representatives and lost four seats in the Senate that year.

In 1976, then-President Gerald Ford, who pardoned Nixon after his resignation two years earlier, lost the presidential election to former Gov. Jimmy Carter of Georgia.

Despite Cruz saying that the election was "volatile," Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has had a relatively stable lead over the past few months. Biden currently has a 9.6-point lead over Trump, based on the Real Clear Politics polling average from surveys released from Sept. 24 to Oct. 9.

Not only has Biden maintained leads in traditional battleground states like Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, but he has polled well in emerging swing states like Arizona and North Carolina, all states that Trump won in 2016.

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