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JWeinCom 2 days ago
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A few points.

Regarding polling, we know a few things. We know that most neutral pollsters have shifted their models to account for misses in 2016 to 2020. We also know there are far more Republican pollsters in the aggregates which have incredibly strange data like Trump winning among women and black people in certain states. We also know that polls overestimated republicans by about 5 points in 2022. With all of that said polls for the swing states are within the margin of error, so statistically, they can go either way.

In regards to early voting, I am not sure what can really be gleaned from it. The republican narrative is that Democrats are not leading the early vote by as much as they did in 2020, so they will lose. But, in 2020 there was a pandemic and Trump was stupidly ranting about early voting being evil. So, there is a reasonable chance that the gap in election day voting will not be the same as it was in 2020.

In both cases, the problem is the same. Whatever predictions we make are only valid insomuch as the electorate (the people coming out to vote and which method they use) are the same as in 2020. They might be, they might not.

So here is my advice, which I need as much as anyone else. Be humble. I believe that anxiety is one of the least pleasant of the emotions we experience. It is comforting to feel like we have read the tea leaves properly and have the answer, even if that's not an answer we don't like. There is a certain solace in resignation. However, when all the votes are counted, there are always a slew of people who seemed to know what they were talking about who will be trying to rationalize why they got it wrong. Those of us just feeding on their table scraps are in even worse shape.

I would love to be able to end things early and know the results now one way or another. But no matter how many podcasts I watch, anecdotes I listen to, articles I read, or crosstabs I analyze, I'm simply not going to figure it out from my computer. I am going to have to deal with this anxiety for at least until election day, and probably a few days after. So do you.