We have entered the last 2 weeks before the election. The slogans have been chosen. The ads have been produced, the airtime slots are reserved. The endorsements are in. The yard signs are planted. Our candidate looks confident, relaxed. The opponent looks desperate. The polls look favorable, well outside the margin of error. Then, the last couple of days, the poll starts to move again for no apparent reason. Nothing happened, no major news items. The election high priests start to wave hands and talk about `momentum' with an air of mistery. That other guy sheds the desperate look and starts to act more confident, even smug. You are queasy from electorate motion sickness - What is going on?
We hear that there is all kind of election history and science to rely upon, and `undecideds' break this way and that in midterm elections, and a four-point movement within the margin of error is a statistical no-change, and all that. Pity that this election is different from the others, with stakes unlike any other, and so are the tactics of our opponents (very well documented on this site and others).
My working assumption is that `leaners' will vote based on who they talk with last, or on the balance of messages they will hear in the last week, and that `undecideds' will go for the side that gives them at least 3 messages in the last 72 hours, or not go at all. Or something like that. And the messages, of course, must fit. A single mother making minimum wage and the mother of a marine in Iraq probably won't have the same election priorities.
Most of us Kossacks are democratic by nature. After all, we are on this site because we respect the 'will of the people'. We also generally respect science. So polls, as a scientific representation of that will, are doubly sacred to us. On the other hand, for conservatives and republicans, the 'will of the people' is a nuisance to be neutralized at election times, and for a whole lot of them the whole idea that there is a 'popular opinion' shaped by facts and measured scientifically is an absurdity, or at best, an irrelevancy. This explains why you see these conservatives hesitate, stunned under the worst setbacks, for a couple of hours, a couple of days at most in the face of the most devastating developments, but then they all get their talking points and go back spewing their canned bulls--t like zombies, swimming against an apparent tide of popular sentiment.
Both positions are the consequence of deeply held convictions, and I can't prove either, but I suspect that in their position may lie their strength in these final days, when the game belongs to that last fifteen or twenty percent who can't make up their minds no matter what. For all I know, there may not even be such a thing as the 'will of all the people'. Of course there are those who wouldn't change their vote if their mother on her deathbed were to implore them as her last wish. But what about the rest?
This is a struggle for the deepest quality of our lives, defined in every conceivable dimension: liberty, economic security, the welfare of our children, and a host of others. I have talked to a lot of people, but not nearly as many as I will talk to between now and November 7th. This is a struggle to the last door knocked on, the last comment dropped, the last smile, the last button, the last word of encouragement. The zombies are already out of the starting gate. Forget the polls - YOU are the decider. Victory depends on you!