The Perils of Believing the Pollsters Every October

Tim Graham on Oct 16, 2026

Everyone absorbing the elitist media spin on the midterm elections cannot avoid the swirling symphony of doom for the Republicans. Conventional wisdom suggests a good night for Democrats, and that's before you look at the president's dreadful approval rating. Polls can be tricky: one can disapprove of Trump and still vote the Republican party line.

All this doom might be accurate -- or it might turn out like 2016. Hillary Clinton had a 98% chance of winning, they said. Then-"CBS Evening News" anchor Scott Pelley suppressed his delight as he claimed, "Time is running out for Donald Trump ... No candidate down this far, this late, has ever recovered." Over on ABC, Jonathan Karl echoed: "Donald Trump is down 17 points among women. You do not get elected ... if you are down 17 points among women."

When all of the media's polls turned out to look like Fake News, Democrats immediately suspected the election had been stolen and then spent four years denying reality.

So it was amazing when the front page of The New York Times on Oct. 15 boasted new research on the president's second-term statements about his loss in 2020: "Trump's Relentless Campaign To Cast Doubt On Elections With Lies and Bold Claims." They don't have the slightest bit of shame about anyone turning that around on them. They won a Pulitzer Prize for their "relentless campaign to cast doubt" on Trump's 2016 election, and they weren't going to send it back in disgrace.

In 2024, the networks spent the last few weeks of the campaign wildly speculating about how Donald Trump wouldn't accept his impending defeat and it would be complete chaos. They eagerly shared the alleged data point from the Des Moines Register that Kamala Harris was up 3 points in Iowa -- and then she lost by 13.

When Trump was victorious again, PBS pundit Jonathan Capehart concluded on Election Night: "I can't help but wonder if the American people have given up on democracy." This wasn't a one-time emotional reaction. Days before Trump's second inauguration, Capehart repeated himself on PBS: "with these results, the American people just sort of gave up on democracy, or wanting to, hey, let's try this authoritarianism ... Let's give that a shot."

Conservatives and Republicans must always contend with the supercilious supposition that "democracy" is only genuinely in place when they lose. The Left believes the "right side of history" must inevitably prevail. The Capehart types all borrow from Martin Luther King that "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." Democracy "dies in darkness" if they don't get their way.

But what we suddenly face in these midterm elections is a "Democratic" Party in thrall to the "Democratic" Socialists of America, whose platform includes repealing the Supreme Court, the Senate and the presidency. If our media elites were champions of democracy instead of Democrat partisans and enablers, they would strongly oppose that extremist tendency. They would defend norms and institutions. Instead, they want to accommodate the DSA so they can gain a majority.

The natural momentum here would lead to Democrats winning back the House, and possibly the Senate. What happens when the DSA faction in those majorities starts undermining norms and institutions? Democrat candidates like Sherrod Brown are already promising to refuse to confirm any new Trump judicial nominations. Sadly but surely, we can guess that journalists will continue to promote and enable whatever tactic gives their side the most power to bend that "arc of justice."

Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org. To find out more about Tim Graham and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.