« Here’s a bit of advice to help maintain your sanity over the next few weeks until Election Day: Just ignore the polls. Unless you’re a campaign professional or a gambler, you’re probably looking at them for the same reason the rest of us are: to know who’ll win. Or at least to feel like you know who’ll win. But they just can’t tell you that.
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So give yourself a break. Step off the emotional roller coaster. If you want to do something to affect the election, donate money or time in a swing state — ideally to a state party or down-ballot race, where your efforts will go further — or volunteer in a local race. Call anyone in your life who might actually be undecided or might not be registered to vote or might not make it to the polls. »
— Ezra Klein at the New York Times.
Don't obsess with polls – even if we're ahead. Just stop it!
For starters, polling never fully adjusted to the post-landline world. Poilsters now have to endlessly adjust and contort raw data to get the results they think they're supposed to get.
One thing we know for certain is that this election is going to be close. Whether we're 1.3% ahead or 0.5% behind, those results are still within those imperfect polls' margins of error.
For whatever reason, Democrats pay far more attention to polls than Republicans. All that doomscrolling and anxiety is unhealthy and is a distraction from what we should be doing.
Elections are about getting more votes than the opposing candidate. If you are truly worried, then volunteer your time. If you get one additional person to vote Dem, that does a lot more good than mass sharing links about polls. There are many candidates for all levels of government who really need your help.
Volunteer Opportunities, Events, and Petitions Near Me · Mobilize
And if you can donate, this is not a time to be stingy. Candidates for House and Senate can often get neglected in presidential years.
ActBlue – Powering Democratic candidates & progressive causes across the country.
And when in groups of people which may include undecided or soft voters, don't let some MAGA loudmouth get away with spewing bullshit. When you don't challenge bullshit, others are more likely to think it's true.
When somebody claims the Trump economy was great, remind the others that Trump's botched handling of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 led to an immediate recession, unemployment, and a series of events which resulted in over two years of inflation.
Trump did not leave office until 20 January 2021. But the MAGA people want voters to think his administration ended on 22 January 2020 – the day the first COVID infection appeared on the US.
Except (maybe) for price gougers, almost nobody was better off in October 2020 than they are now. The United States had the highest per capita fatality rate for COVID of the G-7 countries. It's the only way Trump made America first. Drinking bleach and eating cow paste cured nobody.
To actually win, let's concentrate on stuff we can do personally and let pollsters and pundits have food fights among themselves which we should ignore.
Volunteer, donate, and speak out! You'll feel far better. 😎
