Why Polling Is Difficult This year

Many posts have discussed pollsters' challenges, including the plunge in response rates.  This year, the challenges are even greater.

Michael Dimock at The Hill:

First, we’re seeing more completely “synthetic surveys,” — polls that purport to measure public opinion but don’t actually survey humans. Instead, they use AI to model what people would say. Our research on synthetic surveys finds they are not reliable substitutes for public opinion. Separately, we have also seen polls being shared that are entirely fabricated without disclosure.

Second, uncertainty about voting mechanics, such as mail-in ballots, changing election laws in some states and even concerns about voter intimidation could influence turnout in hard-to-model ways. Widespread mid-cycle redistricting has scrambled voters’ awareness of who’s on their ballots. And the 2026 race has fewer incumbents on the ballot than any general election since 1992.

Third, the issues of AI and data centers have swelled into the public dialogue but haven’t yet become completely polarized by party. This makes the impact of AI on elections more dependent on local conditions, such as planned or existing data centers nearby, and what candidates are saying about the issue.

In short, predicting who will vote has always been hard in lower turnout elections. It’s become more challenging over time, and 2026 has a swirl of unknowns compounding the challenge — a perfect storm ripe for confusion. Any one of these factors could yield surprises that are impossible to predict, even for the highest quality polls.

His Holiness Votes

The first American Pope makes news.

Christopher Hale at Letters from Leo:

Pope Leo XIV has requested a mail ballot to vote in next Tuesday’s midterm elections.

I confirmed the request this evening with the Will County Clerk’s office in suburban Chicago, where the pope remains registered under his birth name, Robert Francis Prevost. He made the request on Oct. 3, a month before Election Day.

Independent reporting from the Chicago Sun-Times, published this evening, matches my own.

WJOL in Joliet first reported the request on Oct. 23, citing sources who said someone close to the pope had asked for the ballot to be sent to his registered address in New Lenox.

That address belongs to his brother John, who was in Rome this week. On Wednesday, John Prevost joined about 50 parishioners from St. Jude Catholic Church in New Lenox who met Leo in St. Peter’s Square at the end of a pilgrimage in the footsteps of St. Augustine, Vatican News reported.

It is plausible that John carried the ballot to his brother and is now bringing it home to Will County, though neither the Vatican nor the family has said so.

Pope Leo XIV meets about 50 pilgrims from St. Jude Catholic Church in New Lenox, Ill., among them his brother John Prevost (in white, front row at left), in St. Peter’s Square on Oct. 28. (Vatican Media)

It is not immediately known whether Leo has already returned his ballot to the county. Once he does, Leo will become the first pope in the two-thousand-year history of the Catholic Church to vote in a secular election.

Bernie Moreno's Religious Test

 Many posts have discussed the role of religion in American life.  

Michael Luciano at Mediaite:

Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH) said on Wednesday night that anyone who does not believe that Jesus died for their salvation is unfit to serve in the Senate and “should be nowhere near Washington.”

Moreno spoke at a rally in Chillicothe, Ohio, where he was joined by President Donald Trump and Sen. Jon Husted, who is in a close race against former Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown.

During his remarks, Moreno turned his attention to Michigan, where Democrat Abdul El-Sayed is in a similarly tight contest with former Rep. Mike Rogers. If El-Sayed wins, he would be the first Muslim to serve in the U.S. Senate.

“On Monday, I went up and campaigned with Mike Rogers because he’s in a race with somebody that just is an affront to me as an American,” Moreno said. “By the way, an affront to me as a naturalized citizen to this country.”

Moreno was born in Colombia. El-Sayed was born in suburban Detroit.

“This character, Abdul El-Sayed, can be nowhere near Washington, D.C.,” he continued before saying non-Christians have no business in the Senate. “Do you think he understands that concept? That our rights come from God Almighty? That Jesus came here for our salvation. He should be nowhere near Washington, D.C. And Mike Rogers is gonna kick his ass on Tuesday.”

Moreno’s litmus test – that only people who believe that “Jesus came here for our salvation” should serve in the Senate – would exclude not only Muslims, but Jews, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, atheists, and everyone else who does not subscribe to his religion.

It is worth noting that Ohio Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, a Hindu, also spoke at the rally.

Article VI of the Constitution famously bans religious requirements as a precondition for public office, stating that “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.

Naturalized Citizens as Eligible Voters

 Many posts have discussed immigration. Illegal voting by noncitizens is rare. But naturalized citizens voting legally is common.

Shifra Dayak and Mia Hennen at Pew:

An estimated 250 million people in the United States are eligible to vote in this year’s midterm elections. Around one-in-ten of them – or 25 million – are naturalized citizens, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data.

Naturalized citizens are people who were born outside the U.S. and gained American citizenship through naturalization. They are generally eligible to vote if they are at least 18 years old, as is the case with people born in the U.S. and those born abroad to American parents.

The number of naturalized citizens who are eligible to vote more than doubled from 2000 to 2024 (the most recent year for which data is available). That is much larger than the increase in the total eligible voter population during that time period. In 2000, approximately 12 million people – about 6.2% of all eligible voters that year – were naturalized citizens.

 

 

Views of Federal Agencies: Public Cold on ICE

Many posts have discussed bureaucracy.

Americans’ views of several major federal government agencies and departments are generally positive, with some exceptions.

On balance, Americans view eight of 12 federal agencies we asked about more favorably than unfavorably, according to a Pew Research Center survey of 5,062 adults conducted from Sept. 28 to Oct. 4, 2026.

The National Park Service, National Weather Service and U.S. Postal Service are viewed especially positively: Two-thirds or more of Americans view each favorably.

The least popular agency of the 12 asked about is Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a component of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). A majority of Americans (56%) express an unfavorable opinion of ICE, while 35% express a favorable opinion.

 

 

More on Russian Influence Efforts

 Many posts have analyzed how foreign governments try to influence American politics and policy. Russia and China are prominent influencers.

They are still at it in 2026

Steven Lee Myers and Dustin Volz at NYT:

Even as President Trump pursued a thawing of relations with the Kremlin this week, a covert Russian influence operation targeted the Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate in Texas, James Talarico, by spreading a fabricated claim of misconduct.

Several groups of researchers who track Russian disinformation operations attributed the claim to Storm-1516, a covert group that in 2024 peddled a similarly unfounded accusation against Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, who was the Democratic vice-presidential nominee.

The attack followed a flurry of Russian posts on social media in recent weeks and provided the latest indication that Moscow is once again targeting an American election with online influence operations. In recent weeks, Russia has ramped up those efforts, according to a U.S. official familiar with classified intelligence assessments on the matter.

Most of the Russian content so far, spread by bot networks around the world, has targeted Democratic candidates, especially in closely contested Senate races that could determine control of Congress in Mr. Trump’s remaining two years in office. Still, the intelligence assessments do not specify that Russia is explicitly seeking to harm one political party more than the other, the official said.

“I characterize it to people as kind of same old, same old,” Representative Jim Himes of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said on Wednesday, referring broadly to Russian efforts so far this campaign. The Russians are “throwing everything out there to generate a sense of chaos and anarchy” in the voting process, he added.

Mr. Himes said Russia was focused “in a bipartisan way” on trying to harm American politicians who had been supportive of Ukraine.

 

Measles 2026

Many posts have discussed myths and misinformation. Among the most notorious peddlers of misinformation is the Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Troy Farah at Salon:

{The] U.S. is experiencing a severe failure to protect the public from measles, with vaccination rates continuing to fall. Yet Kennedy has been reluctant to promote vaccines, continues to cast doubt on their safety and upholds unproven remedies for treating measles, like vitamin A and cod liver oil. That advice has been associated with an increase in calls to poison control for vitamin A exposure, according to research published in June in JAMA Network.

Chris Dall, MA  Liz Szabo, MA  at CIDRAP:

The number of confirmed US measles cases has hit 4,588, more than doubling its total from last year, according to the latest update from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

An additional 178 measles cases were reported this week, and over the past two weeks, 508 new measles infections have been confirmed. That’s more than the nation experienced from 2022 through 2024, when a total of 465 measles cases were reported.

...
Though the CDC has acknowledged three measles deaths this year, Pennsylvania alone has reported five, with a sixth death currently under investigation.

Most of the confirmed cases (96%) have been in people who are unvaccinated or have unknown vaccination status.
True number of cases likely much higher

Since the beginning of 2025, there have been 6,877 confirmed measles cases in the United States, a number that will likely lead to the nation losing its measles elimination status later this year. Measles was declared officially eliminated in the United States in 2000.

But in a presentation today at IDWeek, a major infectious disease conference being held this year in Washington, DC, one infectious disease expert said he thinks the actual number of US measles cases is likely much higher than the official case count.

Andrew Pavia, MD, a pediatric infectious disease epidemiologist at the University of Utah, said that because of underreporting, he believes the number of US cases since the beginning of last year is “probably greater than 20,000.”