Grasping at straws.

Via The Hill:

Outgoing House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s (R-Va.) campaign manager is pinning the blame on Democrats for his shocking loss.

Longtime Cantor advisor Ray Allen, in his first interview since Cantor was stunned by little-known professor Dave Brat (R), told The Hill that he believed Cantor was a victim of meddling from Democrats who crossed over in the primary to vote against him.

“We had probably 15,000 card-carrying Democrats come into this primary. There’s just no way to anticipate something like that,” Allen tells The Hill.

Some Republican allies of Cantor are quietly furious that he and his team had no idea what was coming, and blame inaccurate polling and a weak campaign for not recognizing Cantor was in trouble. The majority leader was so confident that he spent much of election day in Washington, D.C. working on unrelated issues.

Allen defended his pollster, John McLaughlin, who less than two weeks before the race conducted a poll that found Cantor up by a 34-point margin. Brat ended up winning by 11 percentage points, a 45-point swing.

Calling McLaughlin “one of the absolute best in the business,” Allen said there was no way they could have seen this coming from normal polling methods.