Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) has a small chance of defeating Trump-endorsed Harriet Hageman in Tuesday’s open Republican primary, according to Monday’s PredictIt odds.
The betting market shows Hageman is favored to win by 97 cents on the dollar. Cheney’s chances of retaining her seat are at 4 cents on the dollar.
The polls are also in Hageman’s favor. Polling shows Hageman is leading Cheney by 57 points among likely Republican voters. Polling that includes independents and Democrats additionally shows Hageman leading Cheney by huge margins of 30 points, 28 points, and 22 points.
The polling that includes non-Republican voters is a result of Cheney soliciting Democrat voters. Wyoming Democrat party chairman Joseph Barbuto said he believes there will not be enough Democrat votes to save her.
According to the Wyoming Secretary of State’s regular reports on the numbers of registered voters in the state, registered Republicans in Wyoming have increased by 11,495 from January to August this year. The number of registered Democrats, on the other hand, has shrunk by 6,069 in the same period. Unaffiliated voters have also shrunk by 1,575. In total, the state has gained 3,816 more registered voters since January.
“If Cheney loses the usual Wyoming Republicans by a 2-to-1 margin, as polls suggest, she would need something along the lines of 40,000 Democrats and independents to cross over — an insanely high figure in a state where just 115,000 voted in the last midterm GOP primary,” the Washington Post reported.
The total amount of Wyoming voters is slightly more than 284,500. Breitbart News reported that if about 6,000 non-Republicans have registered as Republicans to vote for the incumbent, that number amounts to about 2 percent of the total electorate — assuming 100 percent turnout among all voters.
It seems Cheney’s reelection campaign has been off message. Cheney has spent large amounts of time holding hearings on the January 6 Committee almost two thousand miles away from Wyoming. She has also won the support of Democrats, Democrat donors, and Hollywood elites. On Sunday, just two days before the election, Cheney won the support of disgraced former Sen. Al Franken (D-MN).
Large amounts of outside state money has backed Cheney’s reelection campaign. “More than 1,100 Californians contributed nearly a tenth of the $13 million Cheney raised through June 30 for her reelection campaign, the Los Angeles Times reported. “In that period, she received donations from just over 200 Wyoming residents, totaling more than $260,000.”
In contrast, Hageman has done very well with Wyoming voters, who have donated more than $1.2 million — more than four times as much as Wyoming voters have donated to Cheney, FEC data shows. Overall, Cheney has outraised Hageman by nearly three to one.
Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.