This is a Midterm Election so the Bottom Line is Turnout

If we believe the numbers we've been told represent voter opinion in this country over the past six months, the Democrats should be able to hold on to their majorities in both houses of Congress.  Clear majorities of voters think Trump instigated and should be held accountable for January 6th, a majority believes he illegally took classified documents to Mar-a-Lago, and a clear majority of voters are unhappy with the Supreme Court and with the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade, and over 60% of the electorate doesn't buy the "Big Lie."  Why those issues don't seem to outweigh inflation, gas prices that have dropped considerably over the past couple of months, and the fact that the economy is otherwise roaring along and unemployment is at decades low rates is baffling.  

Then, maybe, it's not so baffling.  

Polls can be wrong, and they have been wrong recently enough to give us a hint that November 8th's outcome may not be as close as the media wants us to believe.  The polls in Kansas, which I am assuming used the same factoring and calculating and ran the same kinds of models they always do, missed the outcome on the referendum on women's reproductive rights by a wide margin, some predicting the referendum would fail by 15 percentage points.  At one point, apparently, raw data from a small sample done by a local newspaper in the state seemed to indicate what was about to happen, but raw data is usually ignored in favor of more educated models based on factors.  

The polls on the congressional special election in New York's 19th district between Democrat Pat Ryan and Republican Marc Molinaro were off by 6 points, three points outside the margin of error, but significant in that his vote total also outperformed President Biden in the district's 2020 vote total by 1%.  

The polls in Alaska were hard to read going into a ranked-choice ballot election for a congressional seat.  In the first round, first choice balloting, against two well-known Alaska Republicans, former governor Sarah Palin and Nick Begich, Peltola picked up 40% of the vote, 10% more than Palin and 13% more than Begich.  That outperformed the polling averages by more than 8 points, while Palin finished 10% below her poll average and Begich, who was picked to win, finished third.  As expected, more Republicans voted for Palin as a second choice, but it was the first choice ballots for Peltola that gave her the margin she needed to surge to 51% when the second choice was counted, and win a 51-48 margin, a full 13% ahead of where the final polls called the race.  

The Dobbs decision was a factor in all three of these races.  It's hard to poll a surge of sudden interest in going to the polls, after the same models and factors have been in place for a while.  And seeing women's reproductive rights go from a single digit percentage to 27% in recent polls, which is about a 20% surge in interest, as the economy and inflation lose some of their edge, is an indication that a lot of those motivated voters aren't "factored" into the polling data.  For one thing, not everyone concerned about inflation and the economy is voting for a Republican.  And not all of those who are concerned about abortion are voting for Democrats.  

Minds are Made Up

One thing is clear.  There aren't a lot of undecided voters.  But if that's the case, then the advantage is decidedly on the Democratic party's side, because of where the vote totals fell in 2020.  The Democrats have a larger pool of voters to draw from, and it comes down to motivating and activating them to get to the polls and vote.  And that's where this election will be won or lost.  Trump has inserted himself into this election by his endorsements and his rallies, and he was the main motivating factor for Democrats, and more specifically, for over 60% of independent voters who stepped up and voted against him in 2020.  And here he is again.  

The only thing different this time around is that Republicans who bought into the massive voter fraud nonsense are using that as a means of justifying intimidation and fraud, and they've geared up to do their dead-level best to steal as much of this election as they can.  In Arizona, armed thugs are posting themselves outside drop-box locations illegally.  Because the presidential election hinged on mail-in ballots, there is a major effort on the part of Republicans to stop them from being cast, or to limit early voting, to try and control the turnout.  

Democrats sometimes are a little too passive in this regard.  I'd be inclined, after seeing the video of the armed scumbags sitting outside the drop-box location in Arizona, to either call the police, or to take turns sitting there to escort voters to the drop-box.  

Democracy is at stake, as we have seen from the extremist MAGA side of a Republican party that has problems winning elections where everyone has access to the polls and can vote.  And while we can do a lot of talking about where the failures have been in our society that have permitted this radicalization to get to this point, whether its massive educational failure, foreign influence of Russia and China in social media, the ugly rise of racism, the subversion and apostasy of American Christianity, the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few who are using it to buy our political system wholesale, or a combination of all of those things, the immediate concern is making sure the right people win this election.  

And that means getting up off your seat and out to vote, wherever you can and by whatever means is available to you, to keep Democrats in office and to add to the majority to make some real progress and prevent this insanity from growing and taking over.