Polling industry

Beware the false electoral prophets

From our US edition

As the 2026 midterm election jamboree entered its final days, the punditocracy has been treated to a couple of cathartic and possibly clarifying shudders. As I write, Elissa Slotkin, a Democratic Senator from Michigan, is scrambling to retrieve her standing after she told an interviewer that she favored having the deep state harass people who supported Donald Trump and the MAGA agenda. She didn’t put it quite like that, of course. What she said was: “I want young people coming out of school to say, ‘Should I go work for the Trump administration?’ I want them to be like, ‘Lord, that might be buying myself a ton of problems that I don’t want, and so let me avoid participating in that.’ I want that deterrence message sent.” “Deterrence,” eh?

Midterms