Let’s Keep Our Eyes on the Prize and Not the Polls or the Odds

Midterm voting season is around the corner – and is here in the states that have already started early voting. Yes, it would be much better for our country if we all voted on the same day, but we can’t change that in time for this next round. This column is not about the mechanics or timing of your vote. It is about the approach you should take to the barrage of polls and stories meant to depress you and convince you that your vote doesn’t matter and you should just give up.

Mark Twain famously categorized intentional deception as “lies, damned lies, and statistics.” Every time you see a political poll, remember that it may well be that third type of deception.

However, even polls that don’t seem to be lies may be wrong. If you can’t help but look at them, always take polls with enough salt to satisfy a good-sized herd of whitetail deer. The same goes for the betting markets.

We should all know this by now, but Samuel Johnson’s famous observation that “men more frequently require to be reminded than informed” is for all seasons—especially election season. So, let’s all remind ourselves on the tenth anniversary of Donald Trump’s stunning first presidential victory why we shouldn’t focus on pollsters and analysts.

An army of pollsters and analysts that year declared that victory for Trump was extremely unlikely at best. FiveThirtyEight, hotshot analyst Nate Silver’s company, famously concluded that Hillary Clinton’s chances of victory were 71 percent.

While that might seem a bit crazy in hindsight, it should be remembered that Silver et. al. were actually much closer than many other polling/analysis outfits. In a post-election analysis, Silver defended his company by noting that they always said the election was tight and uncertain. Further, he rightly observed that “people mistake having a large volume of polling data for eliminating uncertainty.” His blunt summary? “It doesn’t work that way.”

The odds FiveThirtyEight gave weren’t that crazy when you compared them to others: “By comparison, other models tracked by The New York Times put Trump’s odds at: 15 percent, 8 percent, 2 percent and less than 1 percent. And betting markets put Trump’s chances at just 18 percent at midnight on Tuesday, when Dixville Notch, New Hampshire, cast its votes.”

Despite pollsters predicting a Joe Biden win in 2020, even that ostensible victory was kind of embarrassing since the numbers they collected portended a “massive blue wave” and a runaway victory for Sleepy Joe, whose campaign seems to have been conducted mostly in his basement. The wave never hit the shore and Biden’s victory, such as it was, was close and contested.

W. Joseph Campbell, an academic who studies the history of political polling, wrote a brutal analysis of the failures. He observed that pollsters like to “seek comfort, and protection” in their insistence that polls are not predictions. Maybe so, he said, but he argued that “the nearer they are to the election, the more reliable polls ought to be.” He pointed to many polls “embarrassingly wide of the mark.”

If the blue wave was an illusion in 2020, the red wave many of us thought possible in 2022 also turned out to look more like some playful splashes. Though polling seems more likely to predict, wishcast, or cast a spell summoning Democrat victories, we should not get too excited when it looks good for our side. After all, liberals and leftists know that those of us on the conservative side are not obsessed with politics in the way they are. Predictions of our victories may well be attempts to lull us back to political sleep, content that the races we care about are “wrapped up.”

Here in Texas, several races—most notably that between Attorney General Ken Paxton and state Rep. James Talarico—look a little bit too close for comfort in a red state.

They may well be. Senator John Cornyn, crushed by 28 points in the GOP primary runoff, has not been quietly finishing out his Senate service. His refusals to campaign for, raise money for, or help Paxton in any way are accompanied by a lot of angry statements widely interpreted as wishes for a Talarico victory—or, at least, a Paxton defeat. The old Bush/Rove Republicans resent Paxton despite his incredible record serving Texas. This internal GOP fighting could be affecting enthusiasm. So, too, the big money pouring in from blue states such as California, New York, and Massachusetts has kept Talarico in the public eye. Only a bit more than half of Talarico’s funding comes from Texas.

One poll claims Talarico is up by five points. Another puts him ahead by one point. I’m not convinced that Talarico is even ahead. In the 2024 elections, Iowa pollster Ann Selzer famously predicted a three-point Democrat victory there. Trump won by 13 points. Other pollsters were similarly embarrassed by inaccuracy. Predictions for Texas were for a seven percent Trump victory. He won by 13 percent.

Whatever the accuracy of any of the current polls, conservatives must keep in mind that we have to work for victory now. Democrats such as James Talarico might be miming moderation, but once the campaign makeup is washed off, the radical views they’re denying will reappear again.

Let’s play the game. Put up your campaign signs. Post on social media. Encourage friends to vote. Volunteer to take them to the polls.

Many people cite the political wisdom of Will Rogers, but right now the wisdom of Kenny Rogers’s “The Gambler” is apropos: “There'll be time enough for countin' when the dealing's done.”