We are still waiting for final results from Tuesday’s election, as President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden both have pathways to the White House. As states continue to count votes, legal challenges related to the election loom as well.
While we wait, I’d like to address a question many people are asking: Why were the polls so wrong again? Prior to the election, one poll gave Joe Biden a seventeen-point lead in Wisconsin; yesterday, his lead was 0.6 percent. Another poll had Mr. Biden with a five-point margin in Florida and four points ahead in Ohio; the president won Florida by three points and Ohio by eight.
A political science professor notes, “Whatever the final result, there appears to have been a broad and systematic error in predicting the election outcome.” One explanation is social desirability bias, also known as the “shy voter” theory. It holds that Trump supporters were less likely to tell pollsters their political preferences. To the degree that this is true, it betrays something fundamentally wrong about our nation.
According to a recent survey, 62 percent of Americans say they are afraid to share their political views with others. Clearly, we have crossed a dangerous line of essential civility.
Why my father enlisted in the Army
As I note in my latest website article, our nation is experiencing a season of deep divisiveness. We are angry not just at candidates we oppose, but at their supporters as well.
In years past, national threats unified us. I remember packed churches in the days following 9/11 and my parents’ and grandparents’ stories about American patriotism during the Great Depression and two world wars. When the Japanese attacked us at Pearl Harbor, my father volunteered for the Army, a decision that nearly cost him his life. But for the rest of his life, he was proud to have served and proud of the nation he served.
Many hope that our nation can find unity after the election as we face the coronavirus pandemic, economic challenges, and threats from China, North Korea, and Russia. But as scholar Yuval Levin notes in the New York Times, “What has broken down is fundamentally communal and institutional, so that a recovery of the ethos required for our national politics to function is likely to happen closer to the interpersonal level.”
Levin argues that we should “see problems around us as reasons to think creatively about how to act together: to help people who are short of food in this pandemic, to organize schools that will teach our children what our community cherishes most, to help our neighbors feel respected and safe, or to care for our environment or protect and welcome the unborn.”
Here’s how to start, according to Levin: we should ask ourselves, “Given my role here, what should I be doing?” Let’s answer his question as followers of Jesus.
We are in prayer over all these matters……
