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ENTERTAINMENT

Late Night Hosts Prep for Midterms With Whiskey, Lying ‘Voters’

By Erin Nyren

LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – With the 2018 midterm elections tomorrow, late night hosts are joining the rest of the news world to focus on what could result in a Democratic takeover of the House — some more lightheartedly than others.

On “The Late Show,” Stephen Colbert was on edge, turning to a pull of bourbon to calm his nerves.

“Now this year, especially, after being burned by all the prognosticating in 2016, the folks on cable news are playing it safe,” he said, followed by a clip of CNN and Fox correspondents insisting that no one knows how the elections will turn out.

“No, you’re lying!” he said. “I need to know! We can figure this out. Modern statistical analysis can tell me exactly who’s gonna win tomorrow so I can sleep tonight. Let’s crunch the numbers!”

He broke into a mock-hysterical rundown of some key election numbers, including Claire McCaskill in Missouri and Beto O’Rourke in Texas. Those numbers quickly devolved into astrological predictions, Chinese birth year forecasts, and even “Nevada’s Dean Heller saw his shadow, which means six more weeks of election” before he screamed, “Make it stop!” and dodged off camera.

Watch the clip below.

Colbert also proclaimed his excitement for the season to Jake Gyllenhaal, aka “boy,” in a takeoff of “The Christmas Carol.”

Meanwhile on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” Kimmel took a more lighthearted, if also disheartening in its own way, approach by asking people on the street last Tuesday, Oct. 30, whether they had voted at their polling places for a midterms segment of Lie Witness News.

Despite evidently having to make up their experiences on the spot, as in-person voting doesn’t occur until Nov. 6, the interviewees gave detailed answers to questions such as the condition of the polling place, how long it took to finish voting, and whether they had to present their ID. One woman even claimed she had to present three forms of identification, including her driver’s license, school ID, and credit card.

Watch below.

Kimmel also urged viewers to vote in his opening monologue.

“Hopefully we’ll be done with this for a while,” he said. “I’ve had enough. I have gotten more emails this week from the Beto O’Rourke campaign than from my mother, my father, my children and my wife combined.”

He touched on Trump’s tweeting of a image promising sanctions on Iran, which referenced “Game of Thrones.”

“Trump has been threatening to impose sanctions on Iran,” he said. “But rather than do it the old-fashioned way, he decided, or someone in his camp decided, to make a ‘Game of Thrones’-style  meme out of it…It’s just a fun reminder that the President thinks his job is a TV show  — and nuclear war would be a great season finale, it really would.”

He also reeled off a list of statistics about the majority of Americans’ positions on particular policy issues, including net neutrality, tuition-free college, universal background checks, and higher taxes on the wealthy to show that the U.S. isn’t as divided as people think.

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