The last word
Once again, we find ourselves venturing into election day. I encourage all of you to not only vote today, but to also convince like-minded family, friends, and neighbors to go vote as well. Once the polls close tonight, all we can do is await the results. In that regard, here are some important reminders for election night tonight:
– Exit polls are always wrong, and often wildly wrong. Ignore them. The media only hypes exit polls when they arrive because there’s no other data to work with at that point in the evening. Then by the time the exit polls quietly turn out (as always) to have been wrong later in the evening, the media has moved on. So don’t take the exit poll bait when the media does start hyping it early in the evening.
– Results with 1% or 5% of the vote counted do NOT tell you who’s “ahead.” They only tell you which handful of precincts finished counting first. Ignore such numbers.
– Even when a race has 30% or 65% of the vote counted, the candidate with the higher tally is still not “ahead.” You have to look at whether the votes counted are from red or blue counties. The Kornacki board is annoying, but it is the correct way to interpret partial results.
– Some states will count and announce day-of voting before early voting. Other states will have some other staggered order. We know the drill by now. Red mirage, blue mirage, whatever, we’ve seen it all before. If you see initial results that are insanely good or insanely bad, don’t start panicking, because it’ll change.
– DO NOT be the person who spends all evening flooding other people’s social media posts with replies like “I’m so nervous” or “I’m terrified.” Yes, we all feel that way. But if you keep yelling it in the comment section of other people’s posts, you’re just looking for attention, at a time when they’re probably more focused on trying to parse what’s really going on.
– DO NOT fall for the media’s doomsday hysteria. After the polls start closing, it could be hours before there’s enough data to truly understand how things are going. It could be days before we get the final results in some races. MSNBC, CNN, and most Twitter pundits will fill that time with scary prognostications for attention. Mute them all.
– The Republicans WILL start yelling “it was rigged” about every close race we win. Who gives a damn? As we’ve seen in past election, this has no chance of somehow magically making them the winners of races they’ve lost. They mainly just yell the “it was rigged” stuff so they can convince their base that they secretly won, for future fundraising purposes.
– If we win, and you start tweeting things like “oh no, now the Republicans are really going to somehow magically get ahead by claiming it was rigged,” then you’re unwittingly part of the problem. If we win, you have to TAKE THE WIN and run with it. Don’t spin it into a loss just so you can feel panic or outrage.
– No matter how the midterms go, the (entire) mainstream media will spin it as “well now Trump will run/win in 2024 for sure!” But the midterm results have zero impact on that. The DOJ is indicting Trump for espionage either way. A Republican Congress can do a large number of truly horrible things, but it cannot stop Trump from going to prison, no matter how many magic wand ideas get bandied about on social media. Nor will a Democratic midterm victory somehow help Trump’s nonexistent 2024 prospects – but if we win the midterms, the media will surely find a way to spin up that narrative as well.
Remember: staring in fear at your television screen or phone screen does not make you “vigilant.” It is not “activism.” It does not help the Democrats’ odds of winning. That kind of thing is just using politics as pulse pounding entertainment. Activism means doing something. Go get some additional folks to vote today. You’ll be glad you did. Now let’s go win this!
