Are you still scouring the internet for new surveys and regularly checking survey averages in the hope of new reassurances, only to find precious few?

Are you poring over daily turnout reports from the Secretary of State’s office and scanning news of turnout in other battleground states, hoping that the piles of scattered and inconclusive information will ease your anxiety even though it could make it worse?

Maybe you should stop doing these things.

Unfortunately, if you’ve read this far, you may be one of those souls (highly engaged voters) for whom voting and turnout data is like an automobile accident or a burning building at this point in the election cycle: it’s hard to look away.

I am sad.

But even if it can’t save you from your anxiety, fear and Sturm und Drang, there is at least something that can give it a different perspective.

Yes, of course this is another survey.

Or more specifically, a series of surveys.

Sabato’s Crystal Ball, a longtime and highly respected political obstructionist with ties to the University of Virginia Center for Politics, said Wednesday summarized a number of surveys During this election cycle, we asked respondents not who they would vote for in the presidential election, but who they thought would win.

From where? Let Crystal Ball viewers explain:

“A growing body of evidence shows that ‘citizen forecasting’ (CF) enables more accurate predictions of the winner. In fact, CF studies in the United States and the United Kingdom, as well as studies in other democracies (such as Canada, France, or Germany), have shown that voter expectations outperform voter intentions in terms of forecast accuracy.

In other words, “wisdom of crowds” it’s something, it’s something.

Your Crystal Ball first survey Asking respondents who they thought would win the 2024 presidential election was conducted in April of 2023, when Ron DeSantis still seemed to be a lingering concern and many people were hoping Biden would not run (he officially announced his re-election bid later that month).

In the April 2023 survey, 52% of respondents said they thought the Republican candidate would win the presidential election, while 48% said the Democratic candidate would win.

second round of voting but it was withdrawn a year later, in April 2024. By then, poor DeSantis had been defeated, Nikki Haley had highlighted her resume by finishing second in the Nevada Republican primary behind “none of these candidates,” and Democrats were the real deal. they were saying to each other, “Wow, Biden is so old, but we’re committed to him and we’re screwed,” or words to that effect.

Everyone, or almost everyone, assumed this would be a Trump-Biden repeat of 2020. When asked who they thought would win the presidential election, 50 percent said Trump and only 38 percent said Biden or Kennedy, with a mysterious “someone else.” the oddity chosen by the rest.

Crystal Ball’s project concluded with four surveys conducted in June, July, August and September-October.

The June poll, conducted before the June 27 debate that would crush the Democratic spirit and ultimately end Biden’s candidacy, indicated a close contest: 46% said Trump would win, 42% said Biden would win.

The next poll was conducted July 20-22, a week after Trump’s ear was grazed in Pennsylvania, and partially coincided with Biden’s announcement that he would step aside (June 21). This was the only poll in the series taken after the debate debacle, and with Biden still in the race, unsurprisingly 54 percent said Trump would win, while only 32 percent thought Biden would win.

The project’s next poll was conducted between August 20 and 26, about two weeks after Harris secured the nomination, and she stunned many people by turning out to be much more of a boss than was generally thought. The script has flipped: 56% of respondents to the August poll said Harris would win, compared to 40% who said Trump would win.

The fourth and final wave of voting will take place between September 20 and October 1. In 2019, Harris’s vote share was 55% and Trump’s was 42%.

“This current citizen forecast points to a Harris victory in November,” Crystal Ball’s “Last Voice” recap released Wednesday concludes.

“Of course, close races are difficult to predict,” the summary adds, and citizens’ predictions are not perfect. In Crystal Ball, the 2000 and 2016 elections are cited as examples.

In both elections, the presidential winner lost the popular vote. So in this year’s polls, voters were asked not only who they thought would win, but also specifically who they thought would win the electoral college, and the majority still expected a Harris victory.

And on the whole, citizens’ predictions for the US presidential election results are surprisingly good.

Sabato Crystal Ball and the American National Election Poll cover a record of citizen forecast polls going back to 1956. In every presidential election since then, “when the percentage of expectations exceeds 50%,” as in Harris-Trump, “the prediction of the winner of the race has always been correct,” the summary published on Wednesday said.

The report also notes that the most recent poll in the series was conducted about a month before Election Day, but that has been the case throughout the history of the poll series.

So can Democrats take a breath?

Great luck.

Betting markets, which can be considered a variant of citizen prediction, are also generally viewed as a more reliable predictive tool than traditional polls, and they indicate a much tighter race than the Crystal Ball citizen prediction. Harris is ahead in some, Trump is ahead in others. (There are also parts of the presidential betting market that point to a generous advantage for Trump, but that may not reflect the wisdom of the crowd as much.) The intrigues of the crypto brothers.)

Around the time of the final vote in the Crystal Ball series, the Cook Political Report also asked battleground voters not who they voted for, but who they thought would win. Harris was ahead in this poll as well; 46% said he would win, compared to 39% for Trump. However, this is below the 50% benchmark stated by Crystal Ball.

And even given the aforementioned impressive historical performance of citizen forecast polls, if any modern presidential campaign cycle in the modern era has proven to be wildly different from any other, it would be this one.

In other words, let the Democratic handshake continue.

Harris will likely approve. He looks like a leader who enforces a policy of zero tolerance for disturbance.