As we head into Election Day, the doom and gloom over the polls has reached a fever pitch, and, combined with a week’s worth of courtroom losses in election integrity cases, and some uninspiring candidates in some places, I’ve heard from quite a few conservatives who are demoralized and wondering why they should even bother to vote.
Well, that’s a loser mindset if I’ve ever heard one. It is easy, though, to rationalize a decision to sit out the election. I just moved to the Washington, D.C. area (northern Virginia), and have been so busy that I hadn’t registered to vote yet. On Friday morning I thought, “Hmm, I should figure out what I need to do to vote,” looked up the information, and made a plan to head to the local library and do same day registration on Saturday morning. But when the time rolled around, the last thing I wanted to do was stand in line with a bunch of liberal wine moms, especially since I’m pretty sure I know what the results will be in my area. (Don’t kill me, Teri Christoph!)
But I knew that the polls are only right if I don’t show up, and more than that, that I definitely couldn’t encourage you guys to vote if I hadn’t already done so.
Speaking of those polls, the last few days have brought some interesting information. The New York Times trumpets a “blue surge” in their final NYT/Siena poll, but they buried the lede, which is that white Democrats are heavily oversampled and that weighting can’t fix the problem. They try to frame it in a way that is still discouraging to Republicans, though, naturally:
This cycle, Democrats are once again responding to Times/Siena polls at a much higher rate than Republicans. Across these final battleground polls, registered white Democrats were about 30 percent likelier to take the poll than registered white Republicans. That’s actually a bit higher than in the final polls in 2020.
. . .
Weighting is not a panacea. That’s because nonresponse bias can run much deeper than what can be observed and corrected in the data. A poll might be weighted to have the right number of Trump supporters but still have the wrong kind of Trump supporters — and particularly the kind of Trump supporter who might be voting Democratic.
And, they also report that “late deciders are swinging Republican by +9 points.”
🚨BREAKING: Late deciders are swinging Republican by +9 points — NYT NYT also says white Democrats are flooding their poll responses compared to white Republicans. VOTE RED🟥 up and down ballot. We’ve got a country to save! https://t.co/T874JyRpes
— Daniel Cohen (@DanielCohenTV) November 2, 2026
As I’ve said on my friend and Salem “The Morning Answer” host Jennifer Horn’s show repeatedly, you have to go into this believing that all of the polls are trying to encourage Democrats and discourage Republicans. Even the “good news” above.
Even if, like me, you live in a deep blue area, turnout is important for a few reasons. The lovely Roxanne Hoge, who chairs the Los Angeles County Republican Party, explains:
The Left understands incremental wins. The left of the left (DSA, Working Families Party) gets it too. They turn out every voter. Time for the right @RNC @GOP to do the same—yes, even in California. We aren’t a lost cause. We are an abandoned cause. Change that today. https://t.co/xm19nW5dM6
— Roxanne Hoge (@RoxanneHoge) November 2, 2026
I’ve watched how things have gone from bad to worse in California for Republicans, and one reason it has is that the margin of victory has increased for Democrats as Republicans increasingly throw up their hands and say, “Nothing matters” and fail to show up at the ballot box. Democrats have made it easier than ever to cast a ballot there, and their voters are the ones taking advantage of it. Then when you have a few cycles where someone like Gavin Newsom wins by 20+ points, nobody wants to invest in races in the state, and your state simply becomes a piggy bank for Republicans in places like Texas. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Yes, some Republican candidates aren’t very inspiring, and there are a few I really don’t like at all. But as Twitchy editor Sam J says:
I don’t care if your local Republican is a maniac who once tried to arm wrestle a gorilla in a vat of lime Jello (ok, that might be a bit much, but still) or a perfectly normal human who just wants the border closed and gas under four bucks. Any one of them is still better than any Democrat, and I’m not even saying that for a bit. I’m saying it because the other side has spent the last few years proving they will tax the oxygen you breathe, put a biological man on your daughter’s volleyball team, and then call you a bigot for noticing either one.
The other side is filled with crazy people who hate America, who hate you, and will do whatever they can for more power and control. That is who and what Democrats are, and who they’ve always been. Their marketing just got a little better over the years.
And remember, if the Democrats were so confident about winning the House and Senate and a bunch of gubernatorial races, they wouldn’t be acting the way they are. They wouldn’t be engaging in massive levels of preemptive lawfare, and they wouldn’t be resorting to recruiting candidates like Decoy Dan.
So, get out there and vote, and remember Rush Limbaugh’s words, “It’s never going to be time to panic.”
Editor’s Note: The 2026 Midterms will determine the fate of President Trump’s America First agenda. Republicans must maintain control of both chambers of Congress.
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