The first time a movie ever really surprised me was the 1997 film "Contact." In it, humans are sent plans for a machine that, once built and used, appears to transport Dr. Ellie Arroway — played marvelously by Jodie Foster — through a wormhole to an alien planet. She experiences what feels like nearly a day on this other planet, but on Earth it appears she never went anywhere at all. She is grilled by members of Congress over claims that her journey was an elaborate hoax. At the end of the film, it is revealed that Dr. Arroway's recording devices actually captured 18 hours of static, suggesting she had in some way traveled to worlds beyond. I was a middle schooler when the movie came out, and my mind was blown by this twist. Nowadays, it takes a lot more to surprise me. And given all of the wild events leading up to this election, it feels as if nothing could surprise me at this point. Heading into the final month of the campaign, political observers are on the alert for an "October surprise." And I haven't been able to stop thinking about an article in Politico that I read back in January about what possible election-year surprises might look like. The article outlined all of the "unpredictable but entirely possible" events that could "throw 2024 into turmoil"; pundits and academics put forward guesses for what kind of known unknowns, if you will, could alter the course of the presidential race. Politico asked, "What might be the 'Black Swan' event that disrupts the seeming inevitability of the 2024 campaign?" And even though we haven't had an actual October surprise, when I go back and read that article now, it strikes me that in the past year we haven't seen just one unpredictable event, we've had quite a few: the Alabama Supreme Court ruling on frozen embryos that heightened anew the debate over reproductive issues, an assassination attempt on Donald Trump that resulted in the death of a man attending one of his rallies, and a Middle East war that is entering its second year. Most prescient, perhaps, given the aftermath of Hurricane Helene and now Hurricane Milton bearing down on Florida, was this prediction offered by Alec Ross, the author of "The Raging 2020s": "The election outcome will not be known until more than a month afterward because of the difficulty of administering an election with millions of Americans dislocated from their homes and home states due to the storm." One of the predictions in the Politico article that hasn't yet happened (but at this point might not surprise) came from the Harvard astronomy professor Avi Loeb: "Our research suggests that it's only a matter of time before we'll find something that signals that we're not alone in the universe. And that will change a lot of things." What's remarkable in all of this is that despite all of these moments of potential upheaval, short of actual extraterrestrial contact, events have left the political landscape for this presidential race very, very stable. It has been a close one since the Democrats confirmed their nomination of Kamala Harris — whose late entry was its own kind of surprise. Different predictive models show different levels of variation over time, but the story has been broadly the same for weeks: Ms. Harris has a slight advantage in national polls, but the race remains tighter in the battleground states that matter most this year. Our closely divided electorate leaves little room for big swings in public opinion, given how strongly views of Mr. Trump seem to be anchoring the state of the race. His floor is high, his ceiling is low and the race is being contested in the narrow turf in between. Meanwhile, as I wrote recently, the campaigns are competing to define Ms. Harris. Yet according to a recent YouGov/Economist poll, only 3 percent of Harris voters say they are even considering the possibility of voting for Mr. Trump, and only 3 percent of Trump voters say the same about Ms. Harris. I raise this to pre-emptively address the two questions that I'm asked the most these days:
The only correct answers are: "Nobody should feel certain he knows" and "Almost certainly not." The data we have, if correct, suggest a race too close to be truly knowable with any confidence. And that "if correct" is doing a lot of work, as my newsroom colleague Nate Cohn points out in his thoughtful report about poll weighting and this strange election. Even if the polls are accurate, we don't know who'll win. And if the polls are failing to capture something, then all bets are off. With a victory by either candidate possible, no outcome should come as a big surprise. It isn't likely that we'll see huge swings in the polls between now and Election Day, either. Perhaps aliens beaming us instructions for how to reach them would be a shocking development, but at this point, even that might not move the polls too much. We hope you've enjoyed this newsletter, which is made possible through subscriber support. Subscribe to The New York Times. Games Here are today's Mini Crossword, Wordle and Spelling Bee. If you're in the mood to play more, find all our games here. Forward this newsletter to friends to share ideas and perspectives that will help inform their lives. They can sign up here. Do you have feedback? Email us at opiniontoday@nytimes.com. If you have questions about your Times account, delivery problems or other issues, visit our Help Page or contact The Times.
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Tuesday, October 8, 2024
Opinion Today: The October surprise this election season? Maybe that there isn’t one.
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