#CivicsUnhinged #Mr. DunneaginSpeaks
[Editor’s Note: Polls don’t vote. People do. Yet the political class wants us high on trendlines and lulled by charts, convinced that democracy will magically defend itself because a majority intends to do the right thing. But polls are not a plan — and good numbers are not guardrails. While pundits celebrate a supposed “Trump downturn,” the rest of us can see the danger: our democracy is still dangling by a thread, and too many are staring at the scoreboard instead of the finish line. Before another election becomes another shock we swear we “never saw coming,” let’s talk honestly about America’s polling addiction — and the crisis hiding inside our margin of error.]
America does not believe in fate — unless fate comes in the form of a bar chart. Nothing thrills this country more than a good poll, preferably one with trends, arrows, and a double-digit swing that suggests redemption is just one statistical miracle away.
We may no longer trust our elections, our courts, our news, our neighbors, or even our thermostats — but we trust polls. Polls are the national pacifier. Polls are democracy’s emotional support spreadsheet.
Some countries cling to ancient myths for comfort. We cling to “right track / wrong track” numbers.
And why not? Polling promises something irresistible: the illusion that the future will be rationally determined by the present.
The joke, of course, is that this country never gives the future the same answer twice.
Still, every election cycle, we throw the dice again. We consult the oracles of likely voters. We interpret the entrails of crosstabs. And when a poll tells us the cruel and incompetent man might finally be losing ground, we celebrate like we’ve discovered a cure for authoritarianism.
But polls don’t cure anything. Polls are medicine cabinet labels — not medicine.
And in 2025, this national addiction has reached a new fever. The latest numbers claim that Trump has “bottomed out.” Democrats lead Republicans by margins not seen in eight years. Independents are fleeing like patrons from a restaurant that only serves chaos. And some of the voters who once flirted with Trump, including a visible block of Hispanic voters who have endured the brunt of his policies, now appear — shockingly! — to dislike being targeted by the same man they were assured “didn’t really mean it.”
Who could have known?
Oh — that’s right.
He said it. Very loudly. Every day.
In campaign stop after campaign stop, Trump delivered his message with the subtlety of a power drill: Immigrants are the invasion. Deportations are the solution. The cruelty is the brand.
And yet, a chunk of the electorate — nudged by a political consultant here and a cable news segment there — convinced themselves that governing Trump might be a different creature than campaign-stumping Trump. A more restrained version. A housebroken demagogue. The political equivalent of a professional wrestler who doesn’t actually suplex people outside the ring.
But Trump is the rare case where the act and the action are indistinguishable. The wannabe authoritarian you ordered online is the one who shows up at your door.
Now that his second-term agenda has crashed into reality — with mass deportation trials on TV and tariffs emptying wallets — some former admirers are rubbing their bruised dignity and asking: “Wait, does he really mean to govern this way?” Meanwhile, Trump’s forever faithful — the unshakeable base — shout, “Yes! Did you not read the brochure?”
The problem is not that people weren’t warned. The problem is that the media treated the warnings like entertainment.
Cable news didn’t inform voters — it promoted content. It took a man who promised relentless punishment of perceived enemies and told us the real story was how relatable he’d become to disaffected blocs, crossover constituencies, and the mysterious category known as “Hispanics,” as if 60 million people of divergent histories, classes, and political experiences were a single monolithic weather pattern that could suddenly shift red and rain MAGA caps.
Many journalists — too comfortable with narratives they wrote in 2016 — spent years reporting that Hispanic voters were trending toward Trump. Not because he cared about them. But because the story was too delicious for punditry to resist.
And then — plot twist — the knife he sharpened for others turned and drew blood closer to home. Suddenly, the “Hispanic realignment” looks less like a historic shift and more like a bad product review: “Would not vote for again.”
The lesson was never “voters are foolish.”
The lesson was always “voters are hopeful,” and hope is the most exploited commodity in American politics.
Of course, this is where polling returns like a deadbeat gambler with a new system.
The latest surveys promise that democracy is finally coming to its senses. The anti-MAGA majority is reasserting itself. Trump’s incompetence is catching up to him the way gravity catches up to Wile E. Coyote — at terminal velocity. The charts imply a happy ending.
And the press, starved for something resembling good news, is breathlessly selling the idea that a single poll — or even a dozen — means America has finally had enough of the clown show.
This is how MSNBC becomes MS Now — an eternal state of optimistic immediacy. Every night, anchors recite the good numbers like bedtime stories: “Democrats gain +6 among suburban independents!” “Trump’s approval falls below the legal drinking age!” “Voters finally say they care about reality!”
At which point, millions of viewers whisper to themselves: Well, that settles it. We’ve won.
Again.
We have been here before. We will be here again.
If the electorates were consistent, Brexit would have failed, climate change would be solved, and Trump would be a punchline in his own failed game show reboot. Instead, our politics resembles a carnival ride with a broken brake: thrilling until you realize nobody is steering.
Democrats hear good polls and leap directly to parade planning. Consultants begin designing ads before knowing for which election they’re intended. Senate candidates who haven’t finished their bios suddenly believe they’re historic figures whose destiny was foretold in the crosstabs of registered voters age 50–64.
And then, when the count comes in, and gravity refuses to yield to wishful thinking, the Democratic Party stares at the results like a family assembled around a flat turkey: “But the recipe seemed so promising…”
There is a reason America loves polls: Polls allow us to believe without acting.
Polls are civic performative hope: “Look, a majority agrees with me! Therefore, the world will change on its own!”
Spoiler alert: it will not.
Knowing that people support democracy is not the same as preventing autocracy.
Agreement is not participation. Nods are not votes.
Polls measure preference, not power.
Yet every election cycle, we repeat the ritual: We consult the numbers, take comfort in the imaginary future they imply, and then — when the ballots are counted — democracy turns into a group project where one side studies and the other side shows up.
It’s not that polls are wrong. It’s that we use them as excuses.
· Excuses not to organize.
· Not to persuade.
· Not to take threats seriously.
· Not to imagine losing.
Most of all, excuses not to examine why so many Americans keep choosing a man who promises to hurt them and their neighbors — and then, astonishingly, keeps that promise.
This is the American civic paradox: We fear authoritarianism, but we are entertained by its swagger.
We say we crave stability, but we reward chaos every time it polls well.
We treat democracy like a spectator sport but complain that the refs are biased.
And as long as the pollsters reassure us that the numbers are “moving in the right direction,” we let everyone — political parties, media companies, and voters themselves — off the hook for doing the actual work required to ensure the country moves in the right direction.
Because if a spreadsheet says Trump is slipping, well…why break a sweat?
We laugh at those shocked that Trump meant what he said — but our polling addiction is a cousin to their naiveté.
We, too, keep believing that intentions — once written down and measured — will magically manifest into outcomes.
We treat democracy like a Yelp review:
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ — “Loved the ideals! Would vote again!”
And then wonder why the kitchen is on fire.
Polls are not salvation.
Polls are not prevention.
Polls are fiction until counted.
And numbers, like people, can be fickle, flippant, or flat-out wrong.
Ask any Vegas bookie how often the favorite wins.
There is a margin of hope in these trends. America may once again be sobering up from its flirtation with autocracy. People who once excused Trump’s malevolence as “authenticity” are discovering that authoritarianism is not a personality trait — it is a governing strategy. And when the strategy targets you, your neighbors, and your children, it stops being entertaining.
But the danger remains in the margin of terror — not fear of the strongman himself, but fear that we will once again mistake polling progress for civic progress.
If we want Trumpism to end — really end — it cannot be because a polling institute said so. It must be because the people who see the threat outnumber and outvote the people who welcome it.
Democracy is not won by numbers. It is won through participation.
So yes — let the good polling news permit us to hope again.
But not permission to relax.
The scoreboard means nothing if you forfeit before the game ends.
~Dunneagin
