1. Polls are always wrong because they use a subset of humans, some of whom will vote, some not;
2. They don’t measure even the voters accurately because those voters are not in a voting booth and a poll is not a ballot;
3. No events between now and November 5th are factored in;
4. The eagerness of respondents to answer pollsters may reflect a bias resulting from recent positive Kamala/negative Trump press coverage (making Dems more enthusiastic to answer, Trumpers less so), which press coverage WILL change;
5. There is always an x-factor that is revealed only after the election that skews the results (2020, Biden underperformed vis-a-vis polls on Election Day; 2016, Hillary underperformed vis-a-vis polls on Election Day; detect a trend?); and finally and maybe worst of all,
6. Polls themselves have an effect on voters, engendering enthusiasm in some, complacency in others, anger and desperation in still others, despair in still others, and causing many people (probably more on one side than another) to take their eyes off of the actual stakes and to become obsessed with the horse race, which is an inherently passive and possibly fatally detached attitude.
Polls, in short, are the devil. Every successful campaign should always act as though their candidate is a couple of points down, to engender a sense of both urgency and possibility. Polls that show a comfortable lead may be the worst thing for any campaign. It’s like a baseball game where the scoreboard is behind the batter, and players can walk off the field if their team is too far behind or too comfortably ahead. There may be a reason why scoreboards are out of the line of sight of any but the batter and catcher.
Or maybe this poll is “right.” No one can know till after November 5th. Because polls are completely unreliable, especially in a jerry-rigged Electoral College system originally designed to entice low-population and high-slaveholding states into union. But no one alive today ever voted to cede independent statehood in favor of membership in the United States. The Electoral College (and for that matter the Senate as currently constituted) are barbarous relics of a time that was no Eden by any stretch of the imagination. Women’s rights, African-American rights, indoor plumbing, telephony, and cures for common diseases were laughable fantasies back then.
If this poll shows an inclination on the part of the American people to leave the 18th century behind, THAT may be a cause for optimism. But if it is just an antidepressant, or worse, a sedative… it’s the devil.
(Watch this space for a review of Nate Silver’s latest book, On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything, due to drop in a couple of days. I have a feeling I will have some bones to pick with Mr. Silver. …Or maybe not. no one can know the future.)
