The psychological differences between liberals and conservatives are an important and underappreciated aspect of politics. Never are they on display more transparently than at election time, and I submit to you that if Kamala Harris ends up losing this race, the trend I see among liberals may actually be partly to blame for that loss.

To put it simply, liberals tend toward fatalism and panic; the label often used is “bedwetting”. Have you seen these new anti-trans ads? She is condemned. Oh my God, did you see what Nate Silver just said? It’s over. Ouch, the polls in Pennsylvania just moved seven-tenths of a point in Trump’s favor, it’s a nightmare. Oh my God, the early voting totals in Nevada are a disaster. And so on: liberals are looking for reasons to panic. Everywhere you look, liberals are finding a reason to bully their way through these final hours.

Conservatives, on the other hand, tend to do the opposite. They look for things they feel confident in. Hey, check out Polymarket today: our guy is on a cruise. Watch the new Insider Advantage polls; it looks good. Harris bombed CNN town hall. It’s a joke. This thing is over, over, over. (And if we lose, well, you know it was stolen.)

It’s not monolithic. There are confident liberals and worried conservatives, but generally speaking, what I describe above is true. For what?

I’m not really sure. It would take a psychologist to give a complete answer, but I think it starts with the fact that liberals worry more about the world; carry more psychic weight with them. Conservatives also worry about the world, but they do it in a very different way. Liberals like complexity, while conservatives prefer simplicity. Crime? Well, says the liberal, this is all very complicated from a sociological point of view, and we need to study it, think about it and examine the root causes. Whereas for conservatives, the answer to crime is quite simple. Lock them up.