We’re less than six weeks from the midterms. You may safely ignore every prediction, mine included.
We humans only come in messy. Whether well intended, as I hope my comments are, or purely mistaken, which I try to avoid, or outright lies – y’all just quit bothering to listen to me at all the instant you catch me doing that – no commentary is perfect. No analysis is perfect. No people are perfect so it should come as no surprise neither is human output.
This particular cycle, as I’ve explained previously, is seriously over complicated and that makes it incredibly difficult to predict. I won’t make predictions right now – which is a lot later than I’d normally need to wait – because I just can’t be sure. Way too many moving parts and several are new additions that I’m not sure how to interpret. I don’t have a good guess yet – and I don’t think anyone else does, either.
But, it’s perfectly okay for other commentators to feel more confident in their analysis and make predictions regardless of my own reticence. Size Messy includes a variety of different opinions even about our own opinions. Welcome to Humanity! Watch your step!
Here’s what’s NOT okay: pretending you’re analyzing when you are actually trying to influence voter behavior. Yes, for the astute among you, that IS, in fact, lying. It’s not okay.
And yes, it’s happening.
Here’s the easiest way to tell when looking at the ever popular and danged near useless polls. If the media outlet doesn’t include the Margin of Error (MoE), sample size or population sampled (this is that likely voter or registered voter thing), preferably all three but at least ONE in their poll graphic or in their discussion of the poll, the poll is garbage, ignore it.
Why? Simple, it’s not possible to determine how reliable a poll is without that information – especially the MOE. If they are leaving it out, they don’t want you to know that the pollsters had some reservations or didn’t do a good job. Badly done polls are worthless because you can’t be confident that they are correct.
A good pollster will reflect that in the MoE – below plus or minus 3 is probably poor technique where above plus or minus 4 is just plain not being sure of the results. Y’all are already sick of me explaining why small sample sizes make most polls poor at best so I’ll be nice and explain that again some other time. But in general, micropolls shouldn’t have very low or very high margins of error. This is just a rule of thumb, not professional analysis.
But you don’t really want to learn the statistical analysis the MoE derives from, do you? Don’t blame you a bit. The point is to have a tool in your back pocket to help you decide which polls to bother with and which to pass on.
And which reports to ignore.
Why do reporters love polls but then report them without the information you need? Well, they love polls because they are way too lazy to actually go out and hunt down actual news stories. It’s the same reason they report on what someone said on Twitter – or whatever they are calling it now. If they really thought that person had good information to report they would do an actual interview with the person instead of grabbing random tweets to fill out their news reports.
Oh, now don’t you dare do that pearl clutching – you did the same thing in every essay you wrote in third grade. We all did. How much random junk can I throw in this thing before the teacher catches on? Padding essays is just training for padding news reports. It’s just that now it’s your job to catch the little jerks in the act.
The bad part is when they leave out important information. It’s called lying by omission and it’s not because they are acting like third graders (my apologies to all the third graders I just compared to modern journalists). It’s because they are trying to get you to believe that lie.
If you’re a Republican and they can convince you that the Democrats will win the midterms, maybe you get discouraged and stay home. It happens and the tactic is very real. If you are an already discouraged Democrat, maybe you decide to vote after all.
Does it work? Sometimes. Could it work in the coming midterms? Sure, it’s one of those moving parts I mentioned earlier. No one likes rooting for the losing team – maybe the Cubs fans but the Cubs finally won so we can ignore that outlier. People are people and they respond to a variety of different things. They will sometimes chose to just give up rather than slog out to the polls to vote for a hopeless cause.
They will also get ticked off and drag all their friends to the polls. The problem with political trickery is that the public DOES catch on and it can backfire spectacularly. Sometimes, it just works in reverse of what was assumed. Instead of getting discouraged, voters decide it’s even more important to show up.
What do I think? I think the Republicans are more motivated than commentators are assuming. The ‘conservatives aren’t talking about Trump’ trope is hilarious – didn’t anyone notice the 2018 midterms? EVERYONE was talking about Trump and it didn’t help. That’s wishful thinking that somehow the whole MAGA movement and all the revitalization in the Republican Party will disappear when Trump leaves office.
Trump isn’t why the Democrats keep losing. The Democrats mostly did that to themselves. If the Republicans were solely focused on Trump it would be a bad sign for them. It would mean they have nothing to move forward on when he’s out of office. That the conservative commentators are delving into other topics is a good sign, long term. That’s a healthy political party.
Doesn’t guarantee a 2026 win. But it doesn’t point to a loss, either.
So, what should you do? Easy, talk to your friends and encourage them to vote. Then show up and vote.
Yes, you Democrats, too.
Don’t become a jerk just because you think the other guy is. Elections are supposed to be fought out in the ballot box, fair and square. Not by lying to people about polling or giving poor advice to the other guys about voting.
Okay, okay, you Republicans can console yourselves that next to no Democrats will see this and none of your Democrat friends still speak to you anyway.
Still, do the right thing. Play fair. Then go vote!
Oh, my prediction? None yet, but I’m leaning toward a Republican squeaker victory in the House and I’m pretty confident they will hold the Senate. Maybe I’ll give a more definitive answer in a few weeks, maybe not. But one thing I will do – I will vote!
See y’all at the polls! Yes, you, too!
