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What the Polls Can (and Can’t) Tell Us

On this episode of See How They Run, Ettingermentum’s Josh Cohen on how political junkies can get through the next few days.

D.D. Guttenplan

November 2, 2024

Voters fill out their ballot at a polling station, on October 29, 2024, in Grand Rapids, Michigan.(Joshua Lott / The Washington Post via Getty Images)

Well, folks, this is it. After one brat summer, two assassination attempts, three debates, and about 4 million opinion polls, one of the most tumultuous, surreal, polarizing campaigns in living memory has reached the finish line. By this time next week, we will—hopefully—know whether Kamala Harris or Donald Trump is headed to the White House, what kind of Congress they will be working with, and what exactly the people of this big, turbulent, exhausted country have to say for themselves.

Over the past few months, we’ve looked at the 2024 election from just about every angle. Now, for our final preelection episode, we’re zooming out to give you as clear a picture of the current landscape as we can—where things stand, which races you need to be following, and what surprises to look out for on Election Night. And there’s nobody more equipped to discuss that than Josh Cohen, the author of the Ettingermentum newsletter and everyone’s favorite lefty poll-watcher.

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D.D. GuttenplanTwitterD.D. Guttenplan is editor of The Nation.


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