The Funny Thing…

Today’s the first day of early voting in North Carolina, and I spent part of it in Yancey County, one of the hardest-hit areas still reeling after Helene.

Elections director says *RECORD* turnout of over 600 voters so far today, including people who’ve lost everything. pic.twitter.com/PuT1xXgaZD

— stephen fowler (@stphnfwlr) October 17, 2024

...is how people think there are still “closing arguments” to be made, or undecided voters to tip the balance. All indications (not from polling, from actual early turnout) are for heavy, if not record, turnout. And that there’s pent up desire to vote and end this endless campaign season which Trump himself started. He has been the star of a show for over two years now that won’t go away. Voting is the only way to end it.

It may still be close (Biden won by 7 million votes; not a landslide, but clearly decisive in the electoral college. I mean, it was hardly the margin that installed Bush over Gore.), but heavy turnout does not historically favor Republicans.

Undecided voters are the fringe now. Various analyses may “decide” they were important in the end, but that’s really unprovable and indeterminable. Polls really reflect nothing more than the answers of a handful of people to a handful of questions, and the interpretation of that data by even fewer people. The outcome of an election is never more than vaguely predicted by a poll, data on who (in large groups) voted why are nothing more than fitting narratives onto numbers. It’s a conclusion that can truly never be proven.

The only poll that matters is the one beginning every time early voting begins in another state. The old word, “polling place,” was used for a reason. It’s still where the count that matters, occurs. Polling in the sense of the “buckshot use of the curved question” (Walt Kelly) has tried to usurp that more serious claim to legitimacy for almost a century. And attempts by Trump and Co. to cement it, not the actual vote count, as the only legitimate information (because how can the polls differ so much from the final count?), is really exploiting a self-inflicted wound, as we all wait breathlessly for the outcome to match the predictions. And not the other way around.

Anyone else remember Karl Rove telling FoxNews they got their reports of voting results wrong on Election Night 2012? Rove was convinced his knowledge of the polls was more “correct” than the actual vote count. I’m not blaming Rove alone for MAGA, but when the discourse is about how important polls are, the polling place eventually stops being the deciding place.

Except, as I’ve repeatedly pointed out, the law (and the place where the law generally gets the last word, the courts), still holds the polling place paramount. But even people who despise Trump and all MAGA represents, ultimately think the power is in the polls, and not in the polling place. If we are truly a divided nation in our politics, that is the root of our division: that we have moved the “polling place” from an actual location, to a wholly speculative one where we we cannot tabulate, or even finally determine, the outcome.

To quote Mr. Kelly again; “We have met the enemy, and he is us.” Which is actually a very solid Christian teaching. Which is another funny thing entirely.