The big midterm poll reversal
One poll last week that showed the Republicans ahead in the generic midterm ballot, the entire media spent all week hyping it for ratings. Six new polls this week that all show the Democrats ahead or tied in the generic midterm ballot, the media somehow forgets to report it.
There were also multiple polls last week that had the Democrats ahead in the generic midterm ballot, and the media forgot to report on those as well. It just cherry picked the one poll that had the Republicans significantly ahead, and pretended the other polls didn’t happen.
So the generic midterm ballot polls last were essentially tied and the trend last week was flat, but the media falsely reported it as trending strongly Republican. The trend this week is a small but nearly unanimous shift putting the Democrats ahead. The media is ignoring it.
Because the media couldn’t spin the generic midterm ballot polls in the Republicans’ favor this week, it moved on and found some new polls from individual races that show significant Republican gains, while ignoring other new polls in those same races that show no such gains.
Should you even care about the polls at this point? Yes, in the sense that they tell us we’re gaining momentum and can win, and that the work we’re doing on campaign volunteering may be paying off. No, in the sense that we keep working these two weeks no matter the poll numbers.
But can we take a minute and acknowledge the extraordinary extent to which the entire mainstream media has spent the past week and a half intentionally misleading us about what the latest polls even say? Whatever you think of the polls, the media is *lying* to us about the polls.
In other words, all that fear mongering from the media last week about that one poll was indeed just bullshit aimed at scaring us into staring at the screen in fear, in order to boost ratings. The media looks for one wacky poll it can hype, and the rest is just performance art.
Any time we spent panicking and ranting and lamenting about that one poll number last week, was wasted time that we could have spent phone banking instead. As the media prepares to paralyze us with more ratings-driven fictional narratives between now and election day, let’s choose not to fall for it next time. We have too much work to do on phone banking and going door to door for competitive midterm candidates.
