We’ve all been checking Nate’s prognostications several times a day, and by now we’ve convinced ourselves that Trump will no longer have sway in the U.S. House and probably Senate too. But Professor Wellstone, gods rest his soul, and political history have a few hard earned lessons for us. In 1990 Paul was gradually gaining on incumbent GOP Senator Boschwich, but in the last polls days before the election was still trailing by single digits. Then in a poorly timed act of self sabotage Boschwich outed himself as a Jew and criticized Wellstone for not being Jewish enough. Jews and Jew haters alike responded and Wellstone won by 3%.In the same election the GOP governatorial candidate, as GOPers often do, found himself in a scandal involving sex and minors and dropped out on October 28th. Moderate then GOPer Arne Carlson who’d finished 2nd in the primary jumped into the race and from a junkyard campaign office beat democratic incumbent Rudy Perpich by the same 3%.
Then in 1998 race for Minnesota Governor democrat Skip Humphrey on All Hallow’s Eve was polling at 35%, GOP candidate and St.Paul Mayor Coleman at 30%, and Independence Party upstart candidate Jesse Ventura was polling at 27% with a 3% margin of error. Probably overconfident, Humphrey ducked out on a south Minneapolis campaign swing with other DFL candidates while newbie candidate Amy Klobuchar stayed up late talking to voters at a Day of the Dead event. Meanwhile upstart Ventura was on a day and night rubber tired “whistle stop” tour of the state and gaining. Two days later Ventura bested Coleman by 3%, with Humphrey trailing a further 6% behind.
And sadly in 2002 Professor Wellstone delivered his second lesson after his untimely death 10 days before the election. Paul was leading Coleman by a couple percent and the Democratic Party did a great job of replacing him on the ballot with former senator and Vice President Walter Mondale who was leading by 8%. But the break in campaigning gave Coleman a chance to retool his campaign and while Mondale led him by 8% in polling, a perhaps too political memorial service for Wellstone may shifted the swing votes that gave Coleman a 2% victory margin on Election Day.
In 2016 an aggregate of eve of the election national polls showed Hillary leading by 3%, she won by 2% but in the wrong places as the electoral college elected Trump. In 2026 the election eve aggregate was Kamala Harris +1%, she lost the popular vote by 1.5%
A double digit plus percent of the electorate is swing voters and they haven’t even decided for sure which way to swing, or even if they’ll vote. Throw in the instability of the times and even a beyond the margin of error poll lead is not beyond the change of being lost in a 24 hour news cycle. That means most every democrat will have to campaign until the last vote is cast, but we’ve already learned that hard lesson. It also means hundreds of races we’ve abandoned because we’re double digits down can still be won, and we need to exploit that possibility!
Heck, even North Dakota is showing signs of being in play, but there’s no polling…
