The state and national polls are in conflict. Douthat finds a silver lining:
Almost everyone who follows politics lives for the "Dewey Defeats Truman" moments when pollsters get things wrong, because such moments vindicate the existence of actual elections, and the capacity of the public to surprise. In most elections, the people predicting such a moment are just deceiving themselves, “unskewing” polls that weren’t skewed to begin with in order to keep their hopes up and give their voters a reason to turn out.
But not so in 2012. Thanks to the closeness of the race and the divide between state and national polls, both Republicans and Democrats will head to the voting booth next week clutching something almost as precious as the franchise itself – a reason to believe.
It's a genuinely exciting photo-finish, with incalculable future implications for war or peace, growth or a new depression, with a fiscal cliff at the end of it. My main fear is recounts that could change the Electoral College. We could be just as in the dark then as now.
The Dish 