Conventional wisdom could be wrong in this year’s elections

Gordon L. Weil

With the elections at hand, the conventional wisdom is that the Republicans will gain, almost certainly picking up control of the House of Representatives and possibly the Senate.  President Biden has a net negative rating and that’s expected to aid the GOP across the board.

The political analysts reach these conclusions based on three factors: the polls, higher retail prices that can easily be blamed on government spending, and the usual loss of seats in Congress by the president’s party in midterm elections.

Most election speculation is based on polling data.  The public is bombarded with online surveys and automated phone soundings to find out what issues matter to people and how they will vote. But there’s plenty wrong with polls.

Public opinion surveys are most reliable when they are based on a truly random sample of the population. They don’t exist.  Many people refuse or those who answer are not typical. Pollsters adjust the results and their natural bias can creep in. The survey questions may reflect political leaning if not outright bias. And the results are subject to interpretation. 

In short, polling dictates commentary and there’s good reason to be skeptical of it.  On this shaky foundation, the punditry begins.  The analysts sound authoritative, but at best they are making informed guesses.  The expectations created by polls that have the aura of being objective can affect decisions voters make at the ballot box.   Polls create momentum.

Biden tells us that the elections depend on whether the parties get their voters to the polls. The gap between a survey result and what people really do, including not even showing up to vote, is what the Democrats hope will refute the forecasts.

Inflation has become the big issue because it hits you every day.  What either party did for them six months ago matters less to many voters than what they pay for groceries or gasoline today. 

Higher prices have several causes.  The increase in the cost of oil and gas, the major economic byproduct of the Ukraine War, affects almost everything we buy.  Just like the disease itself, the economic effects of Covid-19 seem to be staying with us and are costly.  Bringing production home from China raises costs.

Though these factors are undeniable, they are simplistically boiled down to the cost of government being too high.  The GOP is the party that wants to lower taxes and cut down the size of government. 

Even if there’s a disconnect between benefiting from government action, like renewed roads or Covid-19 income support, and wanting a smaller government, the price of daily purchases may be somewhat blindly dictating the political response.  The purse beats policy.

Conventional wisdom also tells us that people are concerned about crime.  It is difficult to know what that means to each voter, but there is undoubtedly a sense that things are getting out of control when each day’s news seems to contain a report of killings of innocent people.  Without knowing how to stop these incidents, voters may feel that authorities should do better.

It’s also possible that talking about “crime” really relates to ill-considered calls to “defund” the police or police treatment of Blacks and the related reactions to tense situations.

Elections are supposed to give the people the opportunity to tell political leaders how they rate.  Whether the hopes raised in a presidential election year have been realized becomes the test.  If there’s enough disappointment, those in power suffer.  That’s considered to be the normal rule.

The country seems to be evenly divided politically.  As a result, even a small swing to one side or the other can change who’s in control of the government.  This year, there are at least two other factors at work.

One of them is Donald Trump’s effect.  The Republicans have produced some candidates who are closely aligned with him and his policies.  Do they appeal only to the right wing of the GOP, essentially ceding the election to the Democrats, or do they represent a majority of the voters?  Here’s where Biden’s emphasis on Democratic turnout may matter.

Politics in America has always contained a lot of negativity.  You are asked to vote for a candidate because of the defects of their opponent not because of their skills or policies. The chief casualty of this kind of politics is truth.  That’s one reason why elections almost inevitably lead to voter disappointment.

The other factor, mainly identified with the GOP, is voter suppression.  Reducing the effect of Democratic voters by gerrymandering districts, making access to voting difficult or even questionable vote counting are expected to be key factors in flipping the House to the Republicans.

Taking all this into account, we probably know less than we think we do about next month’s election results.