Polls
by Rob Lyons
I’ve stopped reading the polls, because they have no meaning. They tell us Trump and Harris are in a dead heat and it’s too close to call, but this can’t possibly be true, because the polls are always wrong. The margin of error in these polls may be as high as four points, which translates into an eight point swing. Completely meaningless. In actuality one of the two candidates is ahead, but we don’t know which one, and we won’t know until Election Day, (or maybe a week or two later). I suspect there’s some witty quip here about Schrodinger’s Cat or maybe childless Schodinger’s Cat, but just now it eludes me.
It’s pointless to dwell on the polls. I know this now. But once I would eagerly seek out the latest stories about the polling results, the weighted averages, the three-month trends, the outlook, because they would excite me with news that I craved, that my candidate was surging: news that filled me with joy and satisfaction. I would linger over choice phrases and reread them, rolling them around in my mouth. I would tell myself stories and giggle with glee. But another day there would be other news: that my candidate had suffered a sudden plunge of support among young black men or Latinx women of a certain age. There would be deep analysis of the why’s and wherefore’s of this frantic new development (inherent misogyny, deepening of our concern about immigration, leftover anger about inflation). It would ruin my day. But in actuality these were all wild-ass guesses about the inner workings of a hypothetical proposal, a Rube Goldberg contraption constructed on thin air. It’s just a way of jerking myself around on a “poller coaster.”
I’m reading a book entitled Deep Survival, by Laurence Gonzales, recommended to me by Mary Duryee and Walter Kieser. It’s about people who go into the wilderness for sport (mountaineering, hiking, river rafting) and instead find themselves in mortal danger – and it asks who survives these ordeals and why. Gonzales talks about getting lost, and explains that we all have mental maps of the world we live in – whether literal maps showing streets and topographical features, or metaphorical maps that describe how things function or how people are related to one another or how justice is administered. But the map is not the territory. When someone gets lost in the woods, they will likely go through a series of emotional stages not unlike the stages of grief, with denial, anger, bargaining, acceptance, etc. One common response is panic. Another is to climb to high ground to take a look around. The map they’re carrying doesn’t correspond to the world they inhabit, so they seek another vantage, to try to calibrate the map to the reality: “Oh, here I am, I get it now!” But often they’re unable to figure out where they are in the world, and eventually, those who survive will come to the insight that what is important is living right here, right now, and dealing with things as they are. Find shelter, build a fire, forage for food. Those who survive are those who hold their mental maps lightly, and who are able to let go of them when they are no longer useful.
Reading polls is a bit like trying tease out a map from a set of random and unreliable clues, and then using this to inform our mood and outlook. But this won’t get us anywhere, because what matters now is winning the election, not how we feel about our chances. What is required is that we get all of our voters to the polls. So we walk precincts in the same spirit as the lost man finds shelter or builds a fire. This is an appropriate response to our present predicament. Now, it may also be appropriate to plan ahead, and think about how to prepare ourselves for a coup attempt (as we would prepare ourselves for a cold hungry night). This is the same kind of activity that people in Tampa busied themselves with, in buying plywood and plastic sheeting, and protecting their homes as Hurricane Milton bore down on them.
It’s also important to realize that this election is merely an inflection point in a deep historical flow, and not the end of history. Remember after Obama was elected, how we believed we had won, and our work was done? The election of Trump in 2016 and the apparent resurrection and rehabilitation of Trump in 2024 reveal that a staggeringly large number of Americans appear to be open to fascism, misogyny, racism, and violence. This is the real work that we need to do, this is the healing that we need. Once this election is over we will dedicate ourselves to this.
There is an irony here, that learning about maps and reality, about how to let go of the map and step into one’s immediate reality, is itself a map. There is thus an infinite regression of maps about mapping and letting go of maps . . . until finally, hopefully, you drop all this and just respond appropriately. Instinct or emotion or reflex, learned and absorbed into the marrow, this is a lifelong training, and the task and practice are endless.
