"I Am Not An Optimist!"

Well, I Am, But That Doesn't Explain My Confidence About The Election

A few of my readers have told me the same thing in recent days:

“I love your optimism!”

But it’s not optimism that makes me confident about what’s going to happen on Tuesday.

It’s numbers, even though I’ve never been good at math. (For those of you who remember Math SAT scores, mine’s lower.)

I’ve had some good feedback on my previous meditation, so here is something new to contemplate.

Here goes. Focus on this:

7 states that matter

10 states with abortion on the ballot

10 point gender gap in early voting so far

19 points in Kamala Harris’ lead among suburban women, up from 10 points in October and 6 points Joe Biden had in 2020

3 million early votes in Georgia, according to Brad Raffensberger, “On Tuesday, Georgia voters broke the 3 million mark for in-person Early Voting turnout - unprecedented in Georgia history.”

55 million early votes nationwide, according to the University of Florida’s early-vote tracker.

Breathe.

Now think about this.

Maybe you’ve been hearing about polls that show Harris leading narrowly only in Michigan, and behind everywhere else. This comes from Republican leaning Real Clear Politics, which aggregates a bunch of polls that the site has decided are most relevant. Just saying.

See beyond their analysis of Harris up 0.3 points over Trump in Michigan, and behind by 1.3-points in Arizona, 0.7-points in Nevada, 0.5-point in Wisconsin, 0.4-points in Pennsylvania, 0.9-points in North Carolina and 2.3-points in Georgia.

See through even the New York Times, which says Pennsylvania and Nevada are even, Harris is up by 1 in Michigan and Wisconsin and Trump by 1 in North Carolina, Georgia and Arizona.

Repeat this mantra.

Polls that show seven states tied do not show seven states lost.

Breathe.

Remember this, quoting again

Dan Pfeiffer

: “A poll with Kamala Harris up two and a poll with her down two say the same thing.”

And don’t forget this, repeating my link to this data point from the National Journal:

“The entire concept of polling depends on having a set population from which one can take a random sample and get a generally representative snapshot. Pre-election polls have no existing population—the election hasn’t happened yet, and voting isn’t compulsory in the U.S., so we simply don’t have a population of who voted until all the polls have closed on Election Day.”

“We can’t remedy that. The population of voters will never exist prior to the election. Expecting polls to be able to consistently, accurately predict an election is asking more than is statistically and theoretically possible.”

Exhale. Look around you. Believe your own eyes.

Looking at Donald Trump, you do not see someone who’s winning a presidential campaign. You saw the Madison Square Garden rally. You’ve seen his rambling, unhinged news conferences and interviews.

Looking at Trump’s campaign, maybe you see why Fareed Zakaria called it “the most poorly resourced, undisciplined, chaotic campaign in modern political history.”

Or Maybe you’ve read this article in the Guardian:

Revealed: Trump ground game in key states flagged as potentially fake

Data suggests canvassers linked to Elon Musk’s America Pac falsely claimed to have visited homes of potential voters

I liked my line about Ronald Reagan and crushing roadside machinery, so I’ll repeat it, those of us old enough to remember being up against Ronald Reagan recall looking up and saying, “hello, steamroller!” But Donald Trump is driving a tinker-toy.)

The reasoning behind the question about whether I’m just another cockeyed optimist

or if there’s a more substantial basis for my confidence can be found in analysis like this, again from

Dan Pfeiffer

who asks “Will the Polls be Wrong Again?”

By jamming the polls into a 2020 framework, pollsters may be missing huge changes that have happened in the last four years including responses to the pandemic, Dobbs, and Trump’s various indictments, convictions, and assassination attempts. Based on 2022 results, states like Florida have moved to the Right, while Pennsylvania and Michigan may have inched to the Left. To counter this theory, the New York Times/Siena doesn’t weight by recalled vote and their most recent poll is in line with the overall polling average.

Or, to quote myself again, trying to apply any framework for understanding, polling, or contextualizing a presidential election based on past history to an election with Donald Trump in it is like asking, “Besides that comet hitting the planet, how was your day?” We just don’t have a frame of reference for this.

But we do have numbers. And they look good.