Roiling in the turbulence of tracking polls

       My mood these days rises and falls as frequently as a sailboat flung between swells in gale-driven seas. The sharp twists and turns often leave me exhausted and metaphorically seasick by bedtime. 

      The true cause is neither wind nor water, but tracking polls and other analysis for the 2024 presidential election. I follow them obsessively as they fluctuate as wildly these days as the waves and wind in the eye of a major storm. 

      Take Sept. 24. I probably checked my go-to political headline site, politicalwire.com, about 15 times, starting at about 7a.m. soon after I rolled out of bed. The news good, then pretty good, then worse, then good again, then pretty devastating. 

      At 7:47 came the news, from CNN, that “more than 400 economists and former high-ranking U.S. policymakers are endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris and her vision for the American economy.” 

      Chalk up one for the good guys. 

      Polls posted between 9:14 a.m. and 9:20 a.m. had Harris up, if only by 1 to 3 points in Nevada (Noble Predictive Insights), Michigan (US/Suffolk) and North Carolina (Elon University). Tight, but at least stable. 

      At 10:09 a.m. came news from a Harvard Institute of Politics poll showing Harris leading massively among 18 to 29-year-olds, 64 percent to 32 percent. What’s more, the blue team voters (74 percent) say they’ll definitely vote compared to 60 percent of the young Republicans. 

     Things are really picking up. 

      Or not. At 12:15 p.m., politcalwire posts a CNN poll that has Harris up by a merely 1 percent among likely voters. The poll finds only 2 percent of voters haven’t picked a candidate but 12 percent say they could still change candidates. And somewhere around then, a Quinnipiac poll has Trump up nationally by a single percentage point. 

      Uh-oh. Especially since conventional wisdom says Harris needs to win by about 3 percent nationally to hold the electoral college. This is terrible. 

      Until 1:20 p.m., when a Reuters/Ipsos poll reports Harris “widening her national lead) to 7 points. 

      I can exhale again—until my day is crushed shortly before dinner by the venerable (and generally Republican-leaning) Gallup organization that reports the “2024 Election Environment [Is] Favorable to the GOP.” 

      The report begins, “Nearly all Gallup measures that have shown some relationship to past presidential election outcomes or that speak to current perceptions of the two major parties favor the Republican Party over the Democratic Party.” 

      Are they kidding? 

      Favor the Republican Party? With an absolute lunatic leading the ticket, a guy who wants to deport millions upon millions of people the day he takes power, lies like his life depends on it and throws around overt racism like it’s the plat du jour (which, for him, it is). 

      I feel like breathing into a paper bag. (Be rational, Jerry. Be rational.) 

      I remind myself to chant my mantra, the reasons I’m optimistic—at least sometimes—of this election outcome. 

      1. Harris is vastly outraising Trump in contributions from voters.

      2. Harris has seen a surge in registrations among young voters and voters of color.

      3. Thousands of new volunteers have flocked to Harris’ campaign. 

      But will the new, young voters vote?  

      In the answer to that question lies the election outcome. I’m convinced of it. That’s why I’m going to spend the rest of my time in this election doing two things: 

1. Looking for ways to contribute to targeted, data-driven, Democratic-leaning organizations with a track record for getting voters out.

One really good one, which I found through Foundation for Democracy, is Working America https://workingamerica.org/. Foundation for Democracy, which spreads its message by word of mouth, tries to introduce top-flight, targeted organizations working to turn out the vote for specific Democratic-leaning candidates and issues through a series of Zoom forums where the leaders of these organizations explain their mission. It’ll give more bang to any buck you send toward Harris and Democrats than a generic contribution the campaign.

2. Looking for ways to drive voters to the polls for early voting in legitimate swing states. I’m thinking in my case that’ll mean finding an organization that I can work for in Pennsylvania in the week or two before the election to get out the early vote. 

      Sadly, and to me it’s absolutely beyond reason, this election will be perilously close. Should Trump win, I’ll at least have had experience living with daily turbulence. And if it gets much worse, perhaps I’ll board a larger ship—with a one-way ticket—to ports as of yet unknown.

      Jerry Lanson is a professor Emeritus at Emerson College in Boston. He remains an active writing consultant at Harvard’s Kennedy School.