Chuck Todd tells Stephen Colbert why midterm elections are exciting

It’s election day in America and to get voters primed, Stephen Colbert interviewed NBC News political director and “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd.

Todd may be an avowed political junkie, definitely a plus in his line of work, but Colbert admitted that he wasn’t excited about the midterms so much as he was “mid-cited” about them.

“You know I’m getting out of the game,” he told Todd. “I’m pulling the rip cord in just a couple of shows.”

Colbert’s run on “The Colbert Report” will end on Dec. 18 as he prepares to head over to CBS to take over “Late Show” from David Letterman.

But Todd isn’t going anywhere, and while many voters may already be looking ahead to the presidential contests of 2016, he was fully enamored of the excitement Tuesday promised.

“We’re spending $4 billion to decide if it’s Harry Reid or Mitch McConnell that’s in charge of the filibuster,” he said.

He did lament that despite the top two issues for voters being the economy and gridlock in Washington, no campaigns were addressing those issues. Instead, the election was being turned into a referendum on President Obama’s job performance.

Todd said if the media had a strong sense of how the elections were turning out by 11:30 p.m., it would mean a strong night for Republicans, led by early poll closings in North Carolina and New Hampshire.

“I think it could take up to January to decide,” Todd revealed. “Not only could we have recounts, you love those. Not only will it take the Iditarod to get the votes from Bush country in Alaska to find out who wins Alaska, but we’ll have runoffs in Louisiana and runoffs in Georgia in January. So why shouldn’t these midterms last until January 2015? They’re very exciting.”

Colbert did not share Todd’s enthusiasm.

So what will Colbert do if he has to talk midterms into Thursday? Find out in the full interview here.

Twitter: @patrickkevinday