I’ll say this first of all: I’m not making any predictions about this election. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t think anyone does.

Polls

It seems to me that polls aren’t as trustworthy as they once were. This may be because most people have ditched landlines and only use cell phones, which aren’t tied to a particular place. That makes it harder to survey voters in a specific state or district. On top of that, rampant spam and scams mean that many people are unwilling to answer the phone for a stranger. The ones who respond to pollsters may be those who are most want to advance their own views, introducing an element of selection bias.

Also, polls can find out what people are thinking and feeling, but can’t necessarily predict whether they’ll show up to vote. That measure (“likely voters”) is based on guesswork, assumptions, statistical models, and what-happened-last-time inductive reasoning. All of these are factors that may be wrong or may change from one election cycle to another.

And, of course, we shouldn’t discount the possibility of unethical pollsters rigging the numbers on purpose. There’s statistical evidence of herding: pollsters, because they’re afraid of being wrong, are massaging or discarding results in order to better agree with each other. This has the effect of reinforcing conventional wisdom rather than objectively reporting their findings.

Our democracy is split very nearly down the middle, especially in swing states. In this state of rigid partisan polarization, most elections are extremely close. A fraction of a percentage point in turnout, well within the margin of error of any poll, can decide the outcome. Anything that makes one side even just a little bit more motivated can make all the difference.

For these reasons, I’ve come to hate polls. They enable the worst kind of political journalism: the “horserace”, which tells you who’s winning rather than who’s right. It’s lazy hackwork that adds no value to anyone’s life. It’s much like financial journalism, which spends far too much time scrutinizing the random short-term jitters of the stock market, and not enough on economic trends and data that are genuinely useful to know about.

In the long term, polls are useful barometers of demographic and ideological change. But for short-term prediction, they’re almost completely useless. Instead of obsessing over poll numbers, the media should stick to the issues: what promises a candidate is making, whether that candidate has a record of honesty, how likely it is that they’ll be able to keep their promises, and what all that means for average citizens.

Vibes

In the absence of reliable polling data, people turn to vibes. We fix on small clues and guess that they’re indicative of larger patterns – like trying to extrapolate the forest from the leaves scattered around your feet.

If you look at things one way, you can see reasons why Donald Trump will win: voter anger over high prices and immigration, RFK as a third-party spoiler, an uninformed and apathetic citizenry that’s all too willing to believe lies, media bias toward conservatives, billionaire dark money and Russian misinformation farms, far too many racists and sexists who only support white men, the undemocratic tilt of the electoral college, conservatives in positions of power who are ready and eager to steal the election… the list goes on.

If you look at things another way, you can see reasons why Kamala Harris will win: voter anger over high inequality and Project 2025, RFK as a third-party spoiler, the growing secular voting bloc, women enraged by abortion bans, a significant fraction of Republican voters repelled by Trump’s sleaze, independents turned off by his old age and criminality, people of color turned off by his flagrant racism, Democratic outperformance in the last cycle indicative of a highly motivated base… the list goes on.

Which one is the more accurate guide? Which set of signs should we believe?

There’s no way to know. Especially since 2016, I’ve come to realize that predicting the future is impossible, so I try to spend as little time and mental energy as possible on it.

Human nature

In some respects, this goes against human nature. Humans are obsessive future predictors: it’s our evolutionary legacy, our chief survival strategy, our biggest asset as a species. Our brains are constantly guessing what might happen next, and using that to inform our decisions in the present. But when we dwell on outcomes that are beyond the power of a single individual to change, it becomes an endless loop of rumination: unproductive at best, actively harmful at worst.

As I’ve noted, conservatives are the party of toxic optimism. They’re recklessly overconfident, whatever their actual chances. That’s what you’d expect from a party run by religious fundamentalists who believe God is on their side. Blind faith is the supreme virtue, and admitting to any doubt is ferociously discouraged and will get you cast out.

Progressives have the opposite problem. We’re excessively pessimistic, often more so than the facts support. We’re overly susceptible to doom and gloom and catastrophizing. After bad headlines, I often find social media becomes unbearable for a few days, as people I follow engage in a collective lamentation.

I try to bear this in mind and calibrate my expectations accordingly. I find it’s most pleasant to live in a state of mild optimism: hoping for the best, but being prepared for the worst.

Going too far in either direction will lead you into disaster. If you’re overly optimistic and you lose, then the emotional blow will be that much more severe and damaging, because you weren’t expecting it. On the other hand, if you’re excessively pessimistic, then you’ll inflict potentially unnecessary suffering on yourself by fretting about an outcome that might never happen. It’s like paying interest on a loan you haven’t taken out yet.

For the sake of my own mental tranquility, I try to stay in that middle ground between hope and fear. That’s not to say it’s easy. It’s like standing on a narrow precipice with steep valleys falling away on either side. Any fleeting sentiment, any piece of news good or bad, has a tendency to push me in one direction or the other. It takes effort to maintain my equilibrium, but it pays dividends in peace of mind. No one could live in this borderland of uncertainty forever, but it’s a temporary state. One way or the other, we’ll know soon enough.