As I immerse myself in the start of football season and the home stretch of the general election, it’s hard not to notice a few striking parallels. Aside from the merging of the two worlds in response to Colin Kaepernick’s protest of the national anthem, the ebb and flow of politics and sports share many commonalities.
There are always two opposing sides, represented by two different mascots, and no shortage of trash talk to go around in between contests. Both politics and sports are covered by a breathlessly captivated media, which thrives on the thrill of the competition, and sometimes derision between the two opponents. We use the term “horse race” to describe a political process that paradoxically happens slowly over a year-long period, and unfolds in the quiet confines of single, solitary voting booths. We obsess and agonize over losses in week three, knowing full well that you don’t have to be undefeated to win the Super Bowl.
Regardless, it’s October, and we must necessarily endure a media narrative that assures us the race between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump is so close that we need to remain on the edge of our seats for the next month. While there’s merit to keeping the populace engaged in the election by identifying the stakes as high, we’re now reaching a phase where the media has to flat out obfuscate reality in order to do so. Case in point: the latest word on the street is that Clinton and Trump are “both” the least liked people on the planet, with very little mind paid to who dislikes them and why. It then follows that because they are “both so disliked,” it’s anyone’s guess as to how either one of them can put together a winning coalition in time for Nov. 8.
Of course if you were sentient in 2008, 2012, or during the Democratic primary, you’d know a little something about the Obama Coalition, and how it repeatedly defies conventional “horse race” wisdom.
On September 11, 2008, Gallup reported that Obama trailed McCain, 44 to 48 percent. He would go on to sometimes “lead” Obama one week, then magically fall behind again, week after week until he lost by 7 points on Nov. 4. In fact, when you look at a composite of all the polls taken over the year prior to the election, it becomes apparent that the much ballyhooed “horse race” was just statistical noise. Likewise, Gallup’s final survey on Nov. 4, 2012, predicted Romney would beat Obama 49 to 48 percent. Again, what was packaged into an edge-of-your-seat “horse race” ended in a 5 percent victory commensurate with Obama’s post-convention polling. We were similarly informed that Hillary was in grave danger of losing the nomination to Bernie Sanders, until her blockbuster performance on Super Tuesday rendered the math all but impossible to dispute.
When the contest is over, we conveniently forget how deliberately we were manipulated into believing things weren’t really as probable as they suddenly seem following the victory. We forget that the allure of the “horse race” is manufactured based on who is polled on any given day and why. In our current climate, this means winning, losing, liked, and disliked, are all contingent upon which group of voters, spectators, and fans are polled, and in what numbers. The age of Obama and the ascendance of the coalition that elected him has thrown the whole process for a loop, because traditional polling methods fail to capture our strength and magnitude before we take to the field on game day.
This is how the fact that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama enjoy greater than 80 percent popularity and approval from Democrats and the black electorate gets swept under the rug, while their unfavorables from white, predominantly conservative voters make the front page.
Even Nate Silver acknowledges that our current polling is unpredictable and often inaccurate because of demographics, technology, and declining response rates. What this means is that a coalition of traditionally Democratic constituencies (youth, ethnic minorities, the poor) remains less likely to be polled on any day other than Election Day. It also means that the polls will repeatedly fail to capture the growing diversity of the American electorate, because we’re using models that haven’t yet caught up to the times. Until they do, remember that the season is long, and the big game is still the final word on all the commentary that hyped it.
See you at the “Super Bowl” on Nov. 8.