, Columnist
Have You Seen the Latest Polls? Now Forget Them. Here’s Why.
Just wait — patiently — for the actual election results.
Embrace uncertainty.
Photographer: Samuel Corum/Getty Images
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Glance quickly at polling data published over the last month and you might think that Democrats had substantially improved their prospects after Labor Day, only to squander those gains as September wound down. That would be the wrong conclusion.
It’s tempting to try to figure out whether one party or the other has momentum. I caution against playing that game. The problem? Unless there are massive shifts in the polls, even the best data won’t tell us much.