The horses are turning for home! Okay, yeah, I just mixed the metaphor. But in a way, both are correct. The real midterm race begins now. But since the horses have been galloping around for the last eight months it’s also the final few furlongs heading into the election. Either way, this is where it gets interesting.
Polls are still garbage. Media polls are big piles of garbage. But to the extent that they do still work when done by pollsters that know what they are doing this is the part of the election when the polls become meaningful.
Polls are glorified cross sections. They tell you what is going on at the moment they are done – assuming they are done right. What people were thinking in January is important to candidates as they try to tailor their campaigns to the views of the public. Those same polls are meaningless to the election proper. They are just too early. People change their minds. Things happen that make people really want to change their minds. Life happens and candidates even drop out. January doesn’t tell you what will happen in November.
As we get closer to the election, things start to gel. People who hadn’t made up their minds start making their decisions. People who thought something was really important find something else more important and reconsider. Mostly, people who ignore politics as much as possible start to kind of pay attention if they plan to vote.
There’s no hard and fast rule as to when this exactly happens, nor will there ever be. 327 million people aren’t going to solidify their positions on cue. In general, it seems to start at the beginning of fall. Makes sense, we tend to think of certain things in certain seasons and elections are always in November. Regardless of the exact timing, most people will make their final selections in the next twelve weeks.
September is when the process usually begins. Positions start to gel and polls start to reflect the upcoming election. I said reflect – they are just cross sections and lose relevance almost instantly after being taken. Final fundraising pushes are happening and campaigns hit high gear. Now is the time to pull out the whip and get that horse moving. It is now make or break for campaigns.
Which brings up the dark side of polls: polls are also used to influence voters. Polls that show your candidate losing are discouraging. If enough voters are discouraged enough they stay home. This is probably what was happening in the early 2000’s when media outlets were excoriated for their hilariously erroneous polls.
Before you say ‘but’, the effect is real enough but it’s also variable. In uncontentious election cycles it can be very pronounced because most people aren’t animated enough to vote anyway. In highly contested elections the effect is minimal and can even backfire. People are all fired up and they are going to vote. If they think their candidate is behind, they talk to their friends to get them to vote.
No, I don’t think this was what happened in 2016. Well, if it did, Clinton should sue her campaign manager. Clinton needed high turn out (because Democrat) and polls showing her way ahead for months were just sapping her own base’s turnout. A good campaign manager should have downplayed the polls to spur turnout. If they were actually touting erroneous polls to try and discourage the opposition, it was the most ironically amusing miscalculation in decades.
So, coming into the turn, we have a huge herd of horses, all straining at the bit and heading for the finish line. It’s a messy turn with so many flying around the bend. But the head of the pack is straightening out and we are seeing a sea of red.
The primaries are over and they were pretty awful from the Democrat and RINO POV. Thanks to the FBI’s clutzy raid, Trump is actually helping the Republican herd, normally something we wouldn’t see work well. Money is flowing like water, spurring on the Red Team.
Anything can happen but it had better happen soon or the Blue Team will be walking home wearing barrels.
Stay tuned!
