(CNN) — A political analyst who predicted that GOP nominee Mitt Romney would win the White House in November says Fox News may have ousted him from their payroll to make him a “poster child.”
Fox did not renew its contract with Dick Morris, he said on CNN’s “Piers Morgan Tonight” on Wednesday. The conservative pollster said the reason is “because I was wrong, and I was wrong at the top of my lungs.”
The long-time television commentator described the break as a friendly parting and suggested he is hopeful the network would have him back in the future.
“Fox has given me the opportunity of a lifetime – 15 years, 3,000 interviews. And at some point a great marriage has to come to an end,” he said. “The divorce isn’t final, but I am seeing other people.”
A spokeswoman for Fox did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.
Morris referenced polling showing a close race between Romney and President Barack Obama in justifying his prediction that Romney would pull out a win.
But he didn’t: Obama won 332 electoral votes to Romney’s 206.
“The question really is why Obama won by such a margin,” Morris said. And I think the answer is that here has been a fundamental demographic shift in the United States.
“I thought it surfaced in ’08 because of a charismatic candidate. Then I thought it would go back down again … and it did in ’10, they didn’t show up. But in ’12, they showed up again in huge numbers. Eight million whites stayed home in 2012.”
Morris said the “Republican Party has to change in fundamental ways otherwise it will never win another election.”
He joined other Republicans in prescribing a way forward for the GOP. Morris’ prescription included advocating for pragmatic positions on abortion and a focus on “holding down spending and debt.”
He listed many correct electoral predictions he had made over the past two decades, as well as his own record as a political consultant for hire by candidates: “I have gotten 30 senators and governors elected. Fourteen presidents and prime ministers.
The president of the United States twice. And – one and a half, I worked with others in the first go around. So I’m OK on that score.”
