We're just under 200 hours away from Election Day (but who's counting). There are a lot of numbers floating around, between polls and early voting. It can be a lot to make sense of. So what do the experts think? Your host discussed the state of play with Chris Stirewalt, political editor at NewsNation, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a contributing editor at The Dispatch, and Josh Clinton, senior election analyst at NBC News and a Vanderbilt University professor specializing in public opinion and polling. Both took part in a panel hosted by the Vanderbilt Project on Unity and American Democracy earlier this month. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Talk to me a bit about your sense of the early voting numbers. What are you taking away from it? Are there things that we should be cautious of when we're looking at these numbers? Stirewalt: I won't say that I'm ignoring them completely. But we have to remember we went from having in 2016, 40 percent of ballots cast early and absentee, to 2020 when it increased by 50 percent. We have very little idea what voter behaviors are going to be like. Do we have a lot of people who became pandemic absentee voters who like it and are going to stay? How much of a snap back to pre-pandemic voter behavior are we going to see? We don't really know. I think for that reason, I'm just not putting too much stock into it. Clinton: Even if the Democrats are doing better than they were earlier, it doesn't matter, right? Because you have no idea what the Election Day vote is going to look like. Democrats have made the mistake in the past, thinking, "We've got really great early voting numbers," and it turns out, their Election Day numbers were horrible because their voters were all voting early. You can tell yourself a good story, and then be sorely disappointed if you're a Democrat. Do you think that undecided voters are going to be inclined to hit the polls? Stirewalt: The unicorn voter is the voter who is a high propensity voter, who is not that ideological. We know that the more ideological you are, or the more partisan you are, that's closely indexed to the likelihood that you're going to vote. Finding the people who are truly persuadable that are high propensity voters, those people are likely to be more educated, they're likely to be more affluent. … So if you're a Democrat, you're like, this is good because we do better with college educated folks than Republicans do. I point back to Virginia in November of last year, where these Biden-Youngkin voters make a difference. And these folks are going to turn out. When you have more than three-quarters of the country concerned about the direction of the country, that means that it's crossed over partisan lines — they may be thinking about it from different problems, but it certainly crossed over and it's in the air, right? People are anxious, people are very concerned. And I think you are going to see a lot of these unicorns go out there. And that's why, to me, the range of outcomes is so broad, because there's still enough time for another shift. So Democrats are kicking themselves because they feel like they peaked too early. … There may be enough time for the worm to turn yet again, and that the Republicans may be the ones who have peaked too early. I just think we should welcome and embrace the fact that there's a lot more uncertainty in this midterm than in a typical midterm year. Clinton: Particularly looking at non-white voters, they're talking about the economy, issues of crime, jobs, inflation, which are more similar to what Republicans have been emphasizing. Now you see Democrats massively trying to pivot their message, because now they're worried, are they mobilizing possibly the suburbs at the expense of urban voters or non-white voters who are a part of their base? I don't think we know how voters are going to respond. Do you think it's too late for that pivot in messaging? Stirewalt: I think parties and political professionals overestimate the importance of their messages. … The truth is Democrats did wait too long to talk about two issues in an effective way. First and foremost, the economy. The late pivot to the economy does look a little ridiculous. But the other one that I think was just leaving money on the table for Democrats, was talking about crime. What are some challenges that you foresee coming up this year in calling the elections? Clinton: The states that have multiple modes of voting, and when they count their vote differently — especially when they report their vote and you're not quite sure exactly what the fraction of vote is that they're reporting or how much is early, or how much of it is Election Day vote — that can make it really complicated. … You try to be cognizant and humble about what you know and what you don't know about what's going on. We know what's been counted. But we don't know what hasn't been counted. We can call and talk to elected officials, but sometimes they don't even know. Stirewalt: I think for Democrats, the period from 9 to 11 on election night, they're going to know the tale. … If we have a bunch of decisive races earlier in the evening, that's good news for Republicans. If it gets stuck and slows down, that's what Democrats will be looking for. How can trust be built in elections? Stirewalt: States and elections officials need to get faster with their count as the modes of ballot casting have changed. And it's understandable that there's been a lag, but we have to catch up because the opportunities for mischief and misdeeds in that uncertain period are real, and they have to be cognizant of it. Democrats, if they do get skunked, better be magnanimous, and they better be accepting of the results. They better set a good example for what kind of behavior we should expect. Clinton: I think the media also can play an important role in helping show transparency. For example, in Virginia, rural counties in the West are always counting the vote quicker than the more urban counties. You're always going to start very, very Republican, and so making voters aware that's not some kind of funny business. We count votes at the local level, some counties have more people and different processes for doing that. How much should we be taking away from the polls? Stirewalt: On the one hand, you have the deficiencies in polling that substantially relate to rock-bottom response rates. We have not found an answer yet to the very, very low response rates among everybody, but particularly among Republican voters, and trying to control for that can lead you into some strange spaces. On the other hand, we also have a real problem with wanting polls to be what they are not and can never be, which is perfectly predictable. The way that I think about polling late in an election cycle like this — I'm not looking at the numbers to tell me what the outcome is going to be. I'm looking for directional movement. Clinton: Polls can be fun, and they are something to look at, but at the end of the day, they're just noise relative to kind of what really matters. That's kind of making sure that your actual decisions as a citizen are not determined by these kinds of people, the decisions that are being made by pollsters and the people who decide to participate in polls. They give us some crude sense about which states are going to be close or not, but our error around our polls is far greater than we'd like to admit, and that can lead us to kind of some really bad places and bad assessments. It's Monday, Oct. 31. What's more timely than a Halloween-themed campaign spot ? Send tips, tricks and treats at mfernandez@politico.com and @madfernandez616 . Days until the general election: 8 Days until the 2022 World Cup: 20 Days until the 2024 election: 736
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