I am one doom-scrolling, poll paranoiac right now
Next time the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders” is updated, psychiatrists should include a new condition ravaging minds ahead of the election.
Polling paranoia. Data disbelief. Numbers nihilism. Call it what you want, but this disorder is causing more panic than watching a toddler climb the railing at Niagara Falls. Does Joe Biden really have a 95 per cent chance of winning, as The Economist predicts? Did the meticulous number crunchers at FiveThirtyEight really simulate the election 40,000 times and give Biden an 89 in 100 chance of taking the White House?
I’m not buying it. Or maybe I have PTSD. It’s as if the experts are now saying it’s 97 per cent safe to hike in that forest, but all I can think about is the three per cent chance of getting mauled by a bear. We are fixated on the probability of Worst Case Scenario.
Or, as Stephen Colbert put it on Thursday after playing news clips from 2016 in which various pundits forecast a Hillary Clinton victory: “The paranoia is so bad I can’t even pick a mouthwash. I don’t care what four out of five dentists recommend. What does that fifth one know that I don’t?”
This paranoia is now a second pandemic. On Friday morning, the most read story on The Hill was: “Positive Trump Polls Spark Polling Circle Debate.” Oh, boy. On Politico, the No. 1 perch went to: “Trump’s Chances Hinge On A Polling Screw-Up Way Worse Than 2016.”
I’m spending hours doomscrolling and binge-reading lethally dull explainers on methodology, sample size, representation, margins of error and subgroups.
Or as Seth Meyers observed on Thursday night: “It’s the kind of maddening poll results designed to keep you up all night mainlining Xanax and digging through crosstabs: ‘All right, let’s see here, Biden is overperforming with liberal suburban women under 35 who drink Tazo tea and play tennis, but underperforming with centrist NASCAR dads over 50 who refer to the bathroom as their ‘office.’ ”
A recent CNN poll has Biden up by 12 points in a national lead “wider than any presidential candidate has held in more than two decades in the final days of the campaign.”
That should make me exhale.
Instead, I want to scream: “Wake up, CNN!”
The key word above is “national.” Given America’s anachronistic and utterly insane Electoral College, we already know national polls are about as illuminating as a soggy candle.
Donald Trump lost the popular vote in 2016 by three million, but earned the presidency thanks to 80,000 votes in three states, which is smaller than the seating capacity at Michigan Stadium.
A national poll is about as valuable as Canadian Tire money at Red Lobster: No, you can’t pay for the Admiral’s Feast with that fake currency in fivecent denominations. Get the hell out!
So what do the swing state polls reveal? RealClear Politics has a Top Battlegrounds chart that, as of Friday, has Biden up in Florida (+3.1), Pennsylvania (+1.2), Michigan (+6.5), Wisconsin (+6.4), North Carolina (+0.7).
Trump’s best showing is a tie in Arizona.
It looks good for Biden. So why am I terrified of another four years of Trump? Why do I keep wondering what Colbert asked: “It feels like we’re all Charlie Brown going to kick the football, but we know at the last second Lucy’s gonna give us coronavirus. So can we trust the polls or are we trapped in an unknowable universe of chaos?”
Heading into the weekend, the polls feel less like statistical models and more like wrecking balls to our psyches. Gallup might as well be renamed Thanos. In addition to creating a spike in fear and loathing, the polls have also only further polarized America by what political scientists might call psychographic bias: Trump supporters see the numbers and refuse to believe he will lose; Biden supporters are too skittish to believe their guy can win.
The ghost of Hillary in a pantsuit keeps clanging frying pans behind their heads.
I don’t think it’s any coincidence the whispers of a looming civil war started to get louder when polls began to show Trump in a bad way. There is a reason Walmart just pulled displays of guns and ammo. The company is reading the data and predicting violence.
Every time I now see a poll that has Biden up in Pennsylvania, I have a flashback to 2016 and the New York Times Election Needle that soon morphed into a tachometer redlining toward shock and horror. What’s that you say, Poll of Polls? Biden is competitive in … Texas?
That state hasn’t voted for a Democrat since Jimmy Carter.
Here’s the bottom line: If Trump does pull off a second term, polling is dead. The industry won’t need “change,” as happened after 2016. It will need last rites and an unmarked grave.
These polls should be mainlining hope into my bloodstream.
But with less than five days, I can’t shake the feeling a bear is about to rip off my face.
It looks good for Biden. So why am I terrified of another four years of Trump?