It’s Turnout, Turnout, Turnout!

Ted Glick
2 min readOct 31, 2022

Many years ago I discovered the website https://realclearpolitics.com. It’s a website that every day reports on the latest electoral polls that have come out from a wide range of polling companies. It’s a good way to keep up with the shifting tides of political fortune for candidates running for President, Senate, House and Governor.

What I’ve learned through using RCP for over 10 years is that the most accurate way to understand what is happening as far as voter preferences, generally, is to average the latest polls, of which there are many during times like right now when there’s a major national election happening. There can be a wide disparity between polls based upon their having either a Republican or a Democratic lean, or just the methodology that is used. That’s why it is important to look at not one individual poll but at an average over the preceding week or the last several days.

Concerned about the current media coverage, and actual indications, that the Democrats are in definite trouble, I just looked at what the RCP polls are saying right now about the state of play when it comes to the US Senate, a battle where the Dems have a better chance of winning than the House. Here’s what the RCP average of polls is currently saying for what they consider to be the dozen “top Senate races:”

Five of them, in Pennsylvania, Arizona, Nevada, Georgia and Ohio, are toss-ups. No one is ahead by more than 2.1%, within the polling “margin of error.” So those are all races that the Democrats could win…

--

--

Ted Glick

Author of Burglar for Peace: Lessons Learned in the Catholic Left's Resistance to the Vietnam War, climate and progressive activist, father, bicyclist, husband