The RCP polling average continues at 7.8%, but the most recent poll, from Rasmussen, shows Trump in the lead by 1. Rasmussen is often an outlier among the many national pollsters. Virtually the only polls that ever show a very close race or a Trump lead over the past year have been from Rasmussen. No other poll since mid-October (8 in all) has shown less than a 7-point lead for Biden. I should add that many polling experts have a distinctly low opinion of the Rassmussen firm.
Of course the whole point of monitoring the average of many pollsters is in the hope that the polling error (or outright bias) of one is balanced out or offset by those of the others. The question in the last week of the campaign is whether Trump's "October surprise" (the Hunter Biden laptops) is having an impact on the remaining voters (nearly 65 million have already cast their ballots), and so far (apart from Rasmussen) there is no evidence of that.
I am struck by how often pundits (and regular people too!) tend to catastrophize the unwanted outcome of any election. After the election of Trump four years ago I talked to people who worried aloud that their gay friends were going to be thrown in jail. When I asked what made them think such a thing would happen they only seemed surprised that I was so naive.
My point is, it didn't, and anyone who was truly paying attention (rather than indulging in nightmare scenarios ginned up for political purposes) should have known that it wouldn't. The "bad guy" in any election is not the apotheosis of evil that partisans of the other side (the "good guys") will make him out to be.
What this means is that no election is the "Flight 93" election, or the last chance to save the very soul of America. You will hear those voices, but they are solely trying to manipulate you, and trying to do so in a particularly obscene way. They are trying to keep you up at night, fearing, stressed, and to focus that stress on the opposition candidate. Relief can only come (so they want you to think) if the right candidate wins the showdown.
In order to buy into this nonsense you have to believe, as many do, that politics is decisive of human happiness. But all studies show the opposite is true (as Arthur Brooks discusses in this podcast). If you are a Biden supporter and Trump wins this coming election, I just want to tell you, it's going to be okay. Really it is. And the same goes for you Trump voters, who will almost certainly be devastated by the outcome of the coming election.
The political parties know that they have much to gain from engendering fear and unease about the opposition candidate. With all the nuanced skill of the master manipulator, they are working hard to engender that fear and unease in you. Don't let them.
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Read also:
Biden's polling lead over Trump looks more comfortable than Clinton's
Tim Alberta's Funny Feeling about the 2020 Election
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