There comes a time in every election cycle when I get sick of the coverage and can’t wait for election day to come around because we reach the point where there is breathless reporting of polls, who’s up and who’s down, and endless speculation of which party will do well and what that means for the next two years.
I reached that stage of fed-upness yesterday, four weeks before election day on November 3.
I suspect that most people are also probably sick to death of the endless repetition of ads and have already voted or have decided whom and what to vote for so that all this blather has little tangible effect unless there is some spectacular new development or revelation, something that has been given the name of ‘October Surprise’ but which rarely happens.
So from now on, I will just pay casual attention to the election coverage, mostly for amusing trivia to take my mind off the seriousness of the situation.
As always Cory Doctorow has an excellent article on the election.
https://pluralistic.net/2026/10/01/data-centers/#now-make-me-do-it
Also, I do not understand why people should change their opinion of Mr Trump.
And thousands of magats relievedly dusted off their caps.
About the only broadcast programming I watch now is College Football. So mostly a game on Thursday evenings, one on Friday evenings, and several on Saturdays. If a campaign ad dares to blemish my watching, I instantly mute it. The republican ads are so ridiculously evil and stupidly false that I don’t see how anyone could take them seriously, but the democratic ads are just as annoying even if they are mostly true. And by this point, how is anyone swayed by any of it? More money has ruined elections. It most likely won’t change though because a lot of that money goes into the pockets of the politicians. Here’s an idea: take all of that money that would otherwise be spent on campaign ads and divvy it up to all the citizens who vote. Call it an election dividend. That would bring a tear to the eyes of some rich people and politicians.
The main purpose of the endless swarm of ads right up to elections day is to influence the small number of “vibe voters”. These are centrists who pay very little attention to politics, even during voting season, but vote anyway. Because that’s just what you’re supposed to do. Most of them don’t even really read/watch the ads, but will be influenced by them subconsciously, especially when encountered in volume. And sometimes, there are also an even smaller number of people who aren’t really vibe voters but are still on the fence on the major issues; those people do pay more attention, and volume can help swing them into something resembling a position on those issues, at least temporarily. In a close race, those two groups make all the difference.
People who actually pay at least a modicum of attention to politics and have a fairly solid opinion on most of the issues usually aren’t going to be influenced by the ads, and if they are, will change their minds or abstain from voting based on a much smaller degree of ad exposure.
The comments reminds of a poster I saw more than four decades ago: “If elections could provide change, they would have been forbidden.” 🤔