Indivisibles,

We’re about two weeks out from the election, so I want to get right to it
with this biweekly-ish newsletter. First, the quick reminder: We’re here
to get VP Harris and Coach Walz to the White House, deliver them a
Democratic Congress, and then help our new Democratic trifecta pass
democracy reform and codify reproductive freedom. These newsletters are
one way I try to share what I’m seeing, brag about what Indivisibles are
doing, engage in some honest-to-God movement-wide conversation -- and
occasionally share photos of our adorable IndivisiKids. We’re almost
there, so let’s hop to a summary:

The News: The media has been consumed by it: the polls! Harris is down!
These demographic groups are slipping! That battleground is lost! We’re
losing!!! Real talk: We’re not losing. And Trump and his MAGAs are
actively building a sense of inevitability so they can turn around and
deny the results after they lose. My practical advice is simple: Don’t
help them. For your own mental health and for the good of this campaign,
accept that the race is extremely close and [ [link removed] ]focus on contacting voters.
That’s the winning play.

The Brag: Speaking of doing the work…we’re doing the work. I’m writing
this summary from a flight to Texas to get Colin Allred elected, while
Leah is headed to Bucks County, Pennsylvania to talk about reproductive
freedom. Indivisibles across the country are blowing through our door
targets across the country. It’s rock and roll time.

The Discussion: I hope you’ll join Leah and me for a final coffee chat the
day before the election -- 3pm ET on Monday, November 4. We know there’s a
lot of anxiety and uncertainty about what will happen on election day and
in the aftermath. We’ll talk through what we’ve been seeing around the
country, how we’ll be watching the returns, and what the plans are for
potential post-election chaos. [ [link removed] ]Please register here, and feel free to
submit any burning questions you have -- we spend most of our time on Q&A!

The News: What we should talk about when we talk about polls

The frustrating limits of data right now. Let me tell you a story that’s
on my mind. It’s a snowy night outside a rowdy bar. A drunk man stands
near a lamppost, rummaging through the snow. A friendly passerby notices
his frantic search and asks, “Do you need help?”

“I’m looking for my wallet -- I dropped it over there,” the man replies,
pointing to a dark patch of ground across the street.

Puzzled, the passerby asks, “Then why are you looking here?”

The drunk man, exasperated at the question, responds, “Because this is
where the light is!”

Data is great. Data can shine a light on frustratingly impenetrable
problems. I love using data to make informed decisions about where and how
we invest more of our time, energy, and resources to defeat the MAGAs. But
just because data can generate light doesn’t mean it always tells us what
we need to know. Sometimes, the wallet is on the dark side of the road.

Pollsters can tell you how their model of the electorate will vote. What
they can’t tell you is whether their model of the electorate represents
the actual electorate. Nobody can; it’s really hard to do, and it’s
getting harder. That’s why the polls were so off in 2016 and 2020. Every
year, pollsters try new tools and techniques to adapt their models, but we
won’t know until the actual election whose model was accurate.

Two weeks out from the election, the daily barrage of polls is shining a
lot of light and demanding a lot of attention. Politicos, media talking
heads, and armchair Nate Silvers are searching around that lamppost.
They’re making grand proclamations about what we’re all desperate to know:
who’s gonna win?

The Democratic freakout has arrived. Along with those polls and hot takes
comes the inevitable, predictable, almost sacred Democratic Party ritual:
the quadrennial late stage election freakout. 

Like clockwork, at this time of year we get [ [link removed] ]Democrats worrying about
their candidate. We read that after a comfortable Democratic lead, [ [link removed] ]the
Republican is making troubling gains in October. We hear alarming
[ [link removed] ]reports from bellwether battleground counties in the most important
swing states. There’s talk that the seemingly unqualified Republican VP
candidate [ [link removed] ]did themselves and the ticket a lot of favors in the debate.
And then there’s the key battleground state that, while it modestly favors
us, we learn [ [link removed] ]is far from safe. Sometimes, it’s the [ [link removed] ]sinking sensation
that Pennsylvania is slipping away from the Dems. 

If you didn’t click any of those links, I’ll explain the gag: none of
those links are about this election. Those are articles about the
presidential elections in 1976, 1992, 1996, 2008, 2012, and 2020 -- the
last 50 years of successful Democratic presidential campaigns. 

I get the urge to freak out. We all lived through 2016. We’ve been burned
before, and we want to know the future, especially when we’re careening
toward a future that could either be catastrophic and dangerous or
inspiring and reassuring. Polls, political betting markets, “chance to
win” models, and seemingly meaningful anecdotal reporting shine a light on
that dark future. But the light won’t help us find our wallet or defeat
the fascists. At this point, only voter contact can.  

Why the freakout hurts us and helps Trump. Here’s the short version of it:
The freakout is unsupported by the data and is worse than irrelevant --
it’s actively harmful to our goal of defeating Trump. Want more? Here’s
the long version of why we should push ourselves to reject the freakout:

 1. An objective look at the polls says we’re winning. If you look past
the [ [link removed] ]deluge of Republican polls and focus just on the average of the
polls since Harris got in the race, the polling has been pretty
consistent. Harris has maintained a small but durable lead nationally
and in a sufficient number of the seven battleground states. Full
stop. Period. That’s it. It’s a boring story, and boring stories don’t
get retold as much as hot takes, but that is indeed the truth.
 2. The polls won’t be telling us anything new. We’ve known for months now
that seven states will determine the next president: NV, AZ, WI, MI,
PA, GA, NC. We’ve known for months that each of those battleground
states is too close to call based on available data. The polls are
uncertain and will remain so -- of that we can be certain.
 3. Buying into the doomsaying actively helps Trump. If you didn’t catch
our Women Wednesdays for Harris call, [ [link removed] ]I’d recommend you watch it
here. Our favorite brilliant messaging expert Anat Shenker-Osorio made
this excellent point: We all know Trump is planning to contest the
election results after he loses. That plan depends on building up a
sense of inevitability about a win so that he can turn around and yell
“rigged” after he loses. As Anat recommends, don’t carry Trump’s water
for him. 

We’re within the margin of effort. No poll within the margin of error will
help you find what you’re looking for -- but voter contact in these final
days sure can help all of us. We call that the margin of effort. 

With that in mind, I will share with you my thought process for consuming
polls two weeks out from the election. I hope this helps.

My method for staying both sane and focused at this point in the election:

[ [link removed] ]A flow chart with two tracks. The first: Look a new poll! Then hot
damn, we're winning. Blue wave coming. Then OK back to contacting voters
to make sure we win big. The second track begins the same - Look, a new
poll. Then It's bad for us. Then Bullsh*t. I don't believe it. It's an
outlier. Then OK back to contacting voters to make sure we win big.

Hold your head high. We’re winning. And we’re doing the work to win.

The brag: It’s coming down to turnout, and we’ve built a turnout machine

Speaking of doing the work…we’re doing the work. You might have caught
[ [link removed] ]Leah on Chris Hayes or [ [link removed] ]me with Alex Wagner talking about the
ground game or our managing director [ [link removed] ]Mari on MSNBC. I’m writing this
summary from a flight to Houston for Allred, while Leah is on a train to
Pennsylvania for Harris, and Mari is either in Arizona or Nevada (it’s
hard to keep track). 

Across the battleground states, Indivisibles are blowing through our door
targets. Our relational door-knocking program -- Neighbor2Neighbor -- that
connects volunteers to sporadic democratic voters within a block or two of
where they live is on fire. We’re having hundreds of thousands of
conversations with crucial, must-get voters in must-win states.

We just greenlighted more money for all this work because volunteer demand
is outstripping supply. And if we can raise more, we’ll put it to good
use. [ [link removed] ]So if you want to help us reach more voters between now and
election day, chip in here.

While everything may feel like chaos, this part of the campaign is pretty
simple. The battlegrounds are known. The teams are in place. The tactics
are in. The time for grand strategic debates is over. Now we just go as
hard as we can. 

The discussion: Let’s regroup on election eve

Over the course of the last several months, we’ve had six coffee chats --
informal, unrecorded Q&A sessions to talk about the campaign, organizing,
messaging, and anything else on your mind. [ [link removed] ]Put it on your calendar: On
Monday, November 4, at 3pm ET, we’ll hold another coffee chat to discuss
what we’ve been seeing on the campaign trail, how we plan to watch returns
come in, and what to expect after the election. I hope you’ll join us for
this election day eve chat!

Until then, remember: We’re winning and we’re going to win, because we’re
doing the work and we’re going to do the work.

In solidarity,
Ezra

Ezra Levin

[17]Indivisible Co-Executive Director

Pronouns: He/him

PS: At 20 months, Lila knows what she likes. She likes cheese and olives.
She likes being spun around in the office chair. She likes (er, loves)
Moana. And if you don’t know what she likes, don’t worry -- she’ll tell
you.

Meanwhile, Zeke just celebrated his fourth birthday with a
shark/Spider-Man/Halloween-themed party. An October 2020 baby, Zeke’s very
first political rally was the celebration outside the White House the day
the election was called for Joe Biden. He was three weeks old and mostly
slept through the jubilant crowd chanting, “Na na, na na na na, hey hey
hey, GOODBYE.” I think he’ll enjoy it even more this time around -- he
loves a story with superheroes and villains.

[18]Two photos with Zeke and Lila at a pumpkin patch

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