Think Of Something You Know Nothing About...

...Another Way To Think About The Polls

Let’s call this a meditation for nervous poll watchers—and I don’t mean people who stand in front of polling places on Election Day.

Think of a subject that you’ve never been interested in, but other people are. For me, it’s professional sports, and cars. To name just two.

If a pollster called me up and asked me to answer questions for twenty minutes about one of those things, I’d have trouble keeping up.

I might offer opinions that I’d only just begun to form, say things I think the interviewer wanted to hear, or worry about answers that made me look stupid. (Well, that part isn’t true—I’m secure in my ignorance).

Most of us have areas of disinterest that are out of step with a lot of other people. Some of us have no idea what’s on television or in movie theaters. Some people have never heard Taylor Swift or Beyonce.

Think of what that would be for you.

Think how good it is that the New York Times isn’t calling you up and depending on your answers to gauge the mood of the country.

Breathe.

Think of the people who get those calls about politics, and know or care about as much about that as you do about _________.

(Feel like sharing?)

Think that maybe, just maybe, this is relevant to the real state of this election.

Hell yes, it is.

Breathe.

Mute Morning Joe and stop wallowing in the empty calories of cable news smugfests.

Pick up a novel.

Unlock that part of your brain that has blocked your thinking. Conjure the image of Trump’s 39-minute playlist meltdown in your mind, and watch, if you can stand it, his entire interview with Bloomberg and listen to yourself saying, this can’t be working.

It isn’t.

Center your mind on seven sources of energy (not these):

Pennsylvania

Michigan

Wisconsin

Nevada

Arizona

Georgia

North Carolina

Read up on how the Democrats’ ground game is far superior in all those states—and everywhere else—and how the Republicans’ is falling apart.

Keep breathing…and thinking…

Remember why Hillary Clinton lost—it wasn’t because of James Comey. She didn’t campaign in Michigan and Wisconsin and most of all, enough people who were less than enthusiastic about her thought it would be OK to not vote or vote for a third-party, because she was going to win anyway. People won’t stay home this time.

Deep breath.

Let’s take a break. Here’s something completely different (no, not that, but that’s good too) going back to what I said about reading a novel.

Read this by Dan Pfeiffer and this by Larry Sabato to feel a little better about the polls. As

Dan Pfeiffer

writes,

All seven battleground states are within two points — essentially statistical ties…Polls are inherently imprecise. That’s why there’s a margin of error. A poll with Kamala Harris up two and a poll with her down two say the same thing. This race is a toss-up.

And in his piece titled, “Has Anybody Seen Our Crystal Ball Anywhere?” Larry Sabato writes,

The presidential election “vibes” have arguably been positive for Republicans in recent days, but the race is still completely up for grabs.

— Our seven Toss-up states remain rated that way, although we do have some inclination of where we might go in our final projections in at least some of them.

— Close polls aren’t telling us much about the ultimate winner, and other metrics, like early and absentee voting patterns, don’t seem all that helpful either, at least at this point.

One more big breath. Polling isn’t so scary, when you see it up close.

Here’s that nugget I like to quote 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.”

I still believe that one of the candidates has a chance to win all seven of those toss-up states, and it isn’t Donald Trump. We’re not going to see many polls that show Harris winning swing states by five or six points—but the same margin of error means a two point lead today could be five points in November.

Are you starting to feel better?

Exhale.