Stop expecting them to offer clear and accurate predictions — and stop being surprised when they don't
In the days leading up to an election, I have two predictable habits. Each morning when I wake up, and occasionally when I doom scroll at 3 a.m., I obsessively check the polls. I go to FiveThirtyEight, then to the Washington Post, then check Quinnipiac. I look at them seeking some sort of certainty. If they don’t give me the answers I like, I keep looking. I want them to tell me that the candidates I care about are going to win. When they don’t, I keep checking, hoping that their predictions will shift. When they offer favorable results, I worry they will change. So, I check them again. By the time we are a few days from Election Day, I am checking them about 10 times a day.
I can also be counted on to never, ever answer a poll — whether the requests come to me via email, spam call or text. I am not doing it. I never have. Sometimes when I am out with friends we joke that none of us has ever done one. Who has time for that? Who picks up calls from unknown numbers? I have yet to find a single friend who tells me they have answered a poll. Even weirder, we seem pretty smug about the whole thing.
