We are thinking of making the entire Q&A tomorrow about polls. So, if readers have polling questions, either in general, or about the polls this year, please send them to questions@electoral-vote.com. We will see if we get enough.

Polling, Part I: Another Pollster Goes Up in Smoke

Earlier this week, FiftyPlusOne outed Wedgewood Polls as a fraud. Yesterday, FiftyPlusOne, with an assist from The Washington Post, effectively outed SoCal Strategies as another fraud. Not a good week for faith in polling.

To understand what happened, it helps to know exactly how Wedgewood was brought down. FiftyPlusOne found a Wedgewood poll of the Mississippi Senate race to be questionable, so they asked for the raw data. Wedgewood provided it, and it was too "clean" (for example, the percentage of "respondents" who were Black exactly matched the percentage of Mississippians who are Black; same with women and several other groups). FiftyPlusOne paid Pollfish, the same online response collector that Wedgewood allegedly used, to conduct the same poll with the same questionnaire. The results were way different, and so too was the metadata that appeared in the files sent by Pollfish. It was clear that there was a rat here, and Wedgewood was busted.

A big part of what made the Wedgewood scam possible—and this is true with the other fake pollster this year, Median Strategies—is that their website did not identify exactly who was working for the firm. That means there's not even the most basic of accountability. Only a couple other high-producing pollsters this cycle were lacking this information: Quantus Insights and SoCal Strategies. With a little detective work, FiftyPlusOne was able to establish that a Republican operative named Jack Sims was (is?) associated with both Wedgewood and SoCal Strategies. When FiftyPlusOne and the Post tried to contact SoCal Strategies to ask some questions, the firm deleted its entire online presence (website, eX-Twitter, etc.) and disappeared into the ether (Quantus Insights, for its part, added a "Staff" page to its website).

There is still a fair bit that is unclear here. It is plausible that SoCal Strategies was initially legit, and then the name was hijacked by Sims and/or other bad actors. Since their earlier polls look OK, some outlets have retained those in their database and removed only the more recent ones (for our part, we removed all SoCal Strategies polls from our database several months ago, because they smelled fishy). Also unclear is what the motivation was here. The explanation from Median Strategies a few months back was that they were (actually, he was) trying to show how ripe for abuse the process of reporting polls is. Wedgewood has sort of said the same, but that's a little harder to swallow, especially when you have a professional operative behind the firm.

Certainly, Wedgewood at least helped derail the campaign of the centrist Mallory McMorrow, which may have made it easier for Abdul El-Sayed to get the Democratic nomination in the U.S. Senate race in Michigan, which in turn may have made for an easier path for Republican candidate Mike Rogers. These are suppositions, but they are the kind of suppositions a Republican operative might make, and might try to put into effect. In other words, it's certainly possible these phony polls were a form of rodent reproduction. And even if they weren't, certainly there are some sleazy folks out there who are getting some interesting ideas for 2028.

So, the folks who rely on polls—including us—are going to have to be even more careful going forward. Obviously, any firm that does not identify its personnel is off the table. And because it would be pretty easy to fake a staff page, it's going to be necessary to look into these people's backgrounds, and to make sure that they are real and that their résumés are legit. Since we are a small operation, we are not exactly equipped to chase down pollsters and verify their bios. But FiftyPlusOne is doing yeoman work on that front right now. And we think it's safe to guess that some of the major outlets—like The New York Times, which was very embarrassed about including Wedgewood in its database—will be doing more aggressive vetting in the future. (Z)

Polling, Part II: With Experience Comes Wisdom

Many people don't trust the polls. After all, polls predicted that Hillary Clinton would win in 2016. And we are not going to even start on Ann Selzer (who nailed it exactly for 12 years, got one poll wrong, and became a laughingstock as a result).

There is a core problem here and it is a psychology problem, not a math problem. American Airlines operates over 2 million safe flights a year, but the only one anyone remembers is the one in Jan. 2025 that collided with a helicopter in D.C. Same with polls. Most of them are right on target, assuming you understand what they are saying. If a poll says Smith is at 47% and Jones is at 44% the pollster is NOT saying Smith will win. The pollster is saying there is a 95% chance that Smith will end in the range 43% to 51% and there is a 95% chance Jones will end in the range 40% to 48% (assuming a 4% Margin of Error). If Jones wins 48% to 43%, the pollster will correctly say: "I nailed it" but many people don't understand that.

Since polling is rather "in the news" right now, as it were, Politico talked to four top pollsters to basically ask: "Why should anyone believe you?" Good question.

The pollsters polled were Seb Wride (PF Polling), Christine Matthews (Bellwether Research), Charles Franklin (Marquette Law School Poll), and Charlotte Swasey (Searchlight Institute). Matthews said that there are a lot of amateur (or worse) pollsters out there and they give the field a bad reputation (see above). In the past two midterms, the established pollsters actually did pretty well. She also said that some of the sources of problems in the past, especially non-response by Republicans, are being compensated for now. She also said all the talk of a realignment is premature. One election can't show that there is a fundamental realignment, as things don't change so fast.

Franklin said that methodology has changed a lot in the past 10 years. For one thing, they are using a much finer granularity for dividing the country into regions and matching results to known characteristics of each region. He also said that the polling is consistent in a lot of ways. People were unhappy with inflation under Joe Biden so they voted for Republicans in 2024. They are still unhappy with inflation and the polls show that now the Republicans are taking the brunt of it.

Swasey noted that the blocs are not fixed and the pollsters deal with that. She said that the Latinos who vote in presidential elections are not the same Latinos who vote in midterms and she can correct for that. She looks at trends to see where things are heading.

Wride said that when people tie specific things in their lives to specific actions by a politician or party, it affects how they vote. Right now, the increase in gas prices can be directly tied to the war in Iran. That is going to hurt Republicans.

The moderator asked if there is any demographic to watch closely this cycle. Wride said asking about MAGA identity is a good one. If that is slipping, it is a danger signal for the Republicans. Matthews said to look at the fraction of Trump voters who now disapprove of him. Franklin agreed with this and looks at Democrats who support the Republicans and vice versa as an important indicator. Swasey likes to look at how individual candidates are doing compared to the generic House poll. Greatly overperforming or underperforming the generic candidate is a clear signal about that race.

The moderator also asked whether prediction markets could replace polling. Wride said they are secondary. The bettors are just going by the polling. The prediction markets don't add anything new. Franklin noted that in the Wisconsin Democratic primary, the early frontrunner (who lost) was at 90% in the prediction markets until the actual election results started to come in. He doesn't think they add anything either. Swasey said the prediction markets are consumers of polls more than anything else.

The moderator wanted to know about the future of polling. Franklin said: "Oh, woe is us, because we have critics." He noted that journalists also have critics. Swasey said polling is the worst system—except for all the others that have been tried. Wride was optimistic about the future of polling. Despite a few high-profile misses, most polls have been pretty good. (V)

Legal News: Republicans Go for Broke on Voter Suppression

In the latest episode of the Voter Suppression Chronicles, Donald Trump's hand-picked henchmen in the Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security are pulling out all the stops to knock as many people off voter rolls as possible and to create chaos, confusion and fear around voting in general. To do this, they are operating on several different fronts.

To start, they have used DHS to create a national database of supposed eligible voters (or maybe ineligible voters?) and force states to match their voter lists with the federal one, which the feds have admitted is riddled with errors. SAVE (Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements) is an existing DHS tool used to verify the eligibility of certain non-citizens for federal benefits. The Trump administration is expanding SAVE by pulling in private information from the SSA and using that to compare to state voter rolls. SCOTUS has allowed that expansion to continue but many federal courts have blocked the feds from forcing states to turn over their voter rolls. As a result, the second part of this effort (actually comparing the federal and state lists) has not happened, except in a very few states that have voluntarily handed over state voter rolls.

In one case brought by Common Cause and by four citizen voters who were kicked off voter rolls as a result of this effort, U.S. District Judge for D.C. Sparkle Sooknanan, the same judge whose ruling SCOTUS paused in the SAVE expansion case, issued an order prohibiting the feds from collecting state voter rolls and using the SAVE database to purge those voter rolls. Unlike in the other cases, this order applies nationwide. The ruling notes the government's "startling" argument that "every American citizen who registers to vote is the subject of a voter fraud investigation underway in the Civil Rights Division simply because they registered to vote." The decision goes on to state, "Behind all the window dressing, the challenged policy represents the federal government's attempt to decide who gets to vote. But Congress has left that authority where our Constitution has always placed it: with the states." The order prohibits a "dragnet investigation of the entire country" and vacates the CRD's Voter List Maintenance Policy altogether. The order applies nationwide because the judge acted under the Administrative Procedures Act, which SCOTUS carved out of its recent decision limiting the nationwide application of district judges' orders. That order is still in place.

Since number one is largely at a standstill for now, Trump and his minions have moved on to targeting individuals, state governments and elections officials. That is where most of the fights are happening now. But those aren't going well for the feds either.

For example, in August 2026, DHS implemented the Unlawful Voter Initiative to generate target lists for Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) to investigate. Later that same month, DHS issued its "Surge Initiative Guidance" directing HSI to prioritize its investigation of individuals in nine states: California, Connecticut, Georgia, Missouri, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, Washington, and Wisconsin. The target lists are huge and unreliable and there is a great deal of pressure on the field units to conduct interrogations and create reports, videos and photos for release to the media. The field units are also infiltrating and interrogating the staff of non-profits and churches who conduct voter engagement. On September 18, the California Nurses Association, local governments and other voting rights groups sued DHS and its subsidiaries in the Northern District of California, claiming that this Surge violates laws against intimidation of voters and voting assistance organizations and violates the Constitutional right to vote.

On October 21, U.S. District Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguín granted the plaintiff's motion for a preliminary injunction prohibiting DHS from conducting any "elections-related field operations and field interviews" in the nine states "that involve or are likely to involve persons whom the Enjoined Parties know, suspect, or should reasonably know or suspect are U.S. citizens." That last phrase needs some parsing out. It's unclear how effective the order will be with that in there because, at first glance, that phrase seems to water it down quite a bit. On the other hand, it could work to slow DHS down significantly because it's clear that the lists they are using have not been vetted at all. So, if they follow the court's order, they need to take the time to go through these lists to identify the U.S. citizens. If they don't and continue to target U.S. citizens, the court will find they're in violation of her order because they "should reasonably know" the people they're interrogating are U.S. citizens.

Interestingly, the DoJ's immediate reaction was, "of course, we don't interrogate people who are citizens" and they may not want to appeal something that, on its face, seems incontrovertible. So, the order may already be having its intended effect. Martinez-Olguín also could have worded it this way with an eye toward avoiding a stay on the shadow docket by the Supreme Court. It's sad that lower court judges are now having to account for a higher court poised to undermine their careful and thorough law-based work. The judge put her order on hold until 5 p.m. on Friday to give the Trump administration a chance to appeal. Stay tuned.

In addition, since Trump can't force the states to hand over their voter rolls and purge the rolls themselves, the administration is trying a different tack to disenfranchise voters. As we have written this week, Trump has sued California and the LA County Registrar's office under a federal criminal law that prohibits non-citizens from voting in federal elections. Stay with us for a second, because this requires some logical leaps. The DoJ claims that if the federal government provides election officials with a list of people it believes may, emphasis on MAY, be ineligible to vote, and election officials refuse to look into those claims, they are guilty of aiding and abetting voter fraud, even before any of the claims regarding the alleged fraudulent voters have been proved. Did you get all that? And we thought arrests for pre-crimes were just fiction. Therefore, concludes the DoJ, the court should require the state to set aside those ballots and not count them until those people are verified as eligible to vote.

This week the feds filed an application for a temporary restraining order, which will probably be denied. But it's possible the DoJ is looking to get this in front of SCOTUS as yet another "emergency" appeal on the shadow docket as a Hail Mary to get its way. But even if it does get those thousands of Los Angeles votes set aside, it's still unclear how that will benefit the Trump administration in the end, since it is a very blue county. It still seems like it's just about the announcement for an audience of one with the ultimate outcome being secondary. Even a delay in the certification seems like a long shot, especially given how long it takes California to count votes in the regular course of things.

In an interesting aside, the case was originally assigned to U.S. District Judge for the Central District of California John Holcomb, a Trump appointee. On Wednesday, the case was reassigned to Judge David O. Carter, a Bill Clinton appointee, who handled a related case earlier in the year that also tried to bootstrap a criminal law to get the state's unredacted voter rolls. In that case, Carter held, "The DoJ cannot go beyond the boundaries provided by Congress and use these legislative tools in a manner that wholly disregards the separation of powers provided for in the Constitution. It is Congress' role to determine the purpose and use of legislation." That statement could very well be cut and pasted into this case.

Also on Wednesday, Trump demanded that Carter rule on the TRO motion by noon on Thursday. When that didn't happen, his DoJ preemptively appealed to the Ninth Circuit claiming that Carter's failure to act amounts to a "constructive denial" of their motion and is, therefore, immediately appealable. You can't make this stuff up. The Ninth Circuit hasn't responded and Carter has not yet ruled on the TRO application.

Moving along, another bit of drama involves the Democrats going on the offensive to stop the systematic intimidation and harassment of election officials and voter disenfranchisement by the Trump regime. On Tuesday, three national Democratic groups filed a lawsuit in D.C. against Trump, the DoJ, the DHS, Attorney General Todd Blanche and DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin and asks the court to enjoin the administration from threatening and pressuring election officials and attempting to purge state voter rolls. The lawsuit cites the inaccurate claims of the DoJ that noncitizens are registering to vote and/or voting. In Los Angeles, for example, of the 200 names randomly sampled from the list provided by the feds, over half had not been sent a ballot and others appeared to be eligible to vote. And in Nevada, of all the names flagged by the feds, none were found to be registered noncitizens. Again, stay tuned.

Finally, in some late-breaking news, SCOTUS has decided to wade into the voter ID controversy by blocking a lower court's order that itself had blocked the New Hampshire Republican Secretary of State's directive to election officials prohibiting student IDs to be used to verify identity when residents have no other evidence. The ruling came on the shadow docket after New Hampshire filed an emergency appeal following the First Circuit Court of Appeals' denial of its stay request. The Court majority ruled that the lower court had changed the rules too close to the election and so the SoS's directive must stand. As a result, student IDs can't be used in New Hampshire to prove identity while the case continues. Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the sole dissenter and wrote that the lower court did not alter any election laws but stopped the SoS's misleading information about what the law permits.

It may be tempting to read into this a willingness of the Court to get involved in election cases at any point, but this actually seems consistent with the Court's prior rulings on the shadow docket when it comes to pre-election rules, particularly when they benefit Republican goals. While we disagree with that approach and the majority's rulings, we're not ready to say this means that SCOTUS will disrupt the counting of ballots post-election or take other action that could alter election outcomes. That's an altogether different kettle of fish. (L)

Political Bytes, National Edition: Basic Human Decency Really Is Alien to Trump

There's a lot of news we need to pass along, starting with yet another example of the President of the United States doubling down on deplorable behavior.

Doubling Down: Many people dislike the sleazy Vivek Ramaswamy ad, the one that features the mother of Amy Acton (and, by the way, it's come out that mom is a kitten killer). Trump is not one of the people who dislikes the ad. In fact, he likes it very much, to the point that he's demanded that Ramaswamy keep using it, and he's made it a Republican loyalty litmus test. Who knows what Trump's motivation is, beyond his general misogyny. However, the ad is not likely to help Ramaswamy much, and it's only one governorship in one state, anyhow. And the price is that Republicans in other states, in more competitive races, could be damaged by Trump's insistence on nationalizing the thing.

Our Take: The other day, we wrote, in so many words, that when it comes to this particular issue, the fish stinks from the head down. Nothing that has happened since has caused us to rethink that position.

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Desperruption: We're not sure if this is a story that illustrates Donald Trump's corruption, or one that illustrates his desperation in anticipation of a blue wave. Probably both. In any event, last year, Amazon agreed to pay out $2.5 billion to customers who were scammed into buying Amazon Prime accounts they did not want. The checks started going out this week, and the notice included with them advises recipients that the money is courtesy of "President Trump's Federal Trade Commission." This has not been done with previous settlement checks during other administrations, and appears to be the product of a little "cooperation" between FTC Chair Andrew N. Ferguson and Amazon Founder/Executive Chair Jeff Bezos.

Our Take: If you're not having success buying people's votes with the government's money, then we guess you try to buy people's votes with private corporations' money.

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Another New Low: In just the last week, Donald Trump has hit a new low for him in five different polls. The latest is this week's CNN/SSRS poll, which now has Trump at 32% approve, 67% disapprove, putting him 35 points underwater. On the generic Congressional ballot, CNN has the Democrats up 10, 49% to 39%.

Our Take: "The Bush line" might soon be obsolete, to be replaced by "the Trump line."

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Brother, Can You Spare a Dime? Part I: The major organs of the Democratic Party have been pleading poverty all year, and the major media outlets have been running "the Republicans have way more money than the Democrats" stories all year. While this may be true for the RNC vs. the DNC, we have otherwise consistently been skeptical of this narrative. Perhaps we were right to think that way; yesterday the Democrats' Senate Majority PAC announced that it has raised $354 million this year, which is a record. That includes nearly $100 million in October.

Our Take: We stand by our view that the money situation in politics has gotten so labyrinthine, you just can't draw conclusions any more about who is doing well and who isn't.

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One Mississippi, Two Mississippi: Consistent with their not-so-empty bank account, Senate Democrats are now buying commercial time in Mississippi in hopes of getting Scott Colom elected.

Our Take: The Democrats are spending money on U.S. Senate commercials... in Mississippi. Let that sink in for a moment.

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Brother, Can You Spare a Dime? Part II: Elon Musk can spare a dime. He can spare much more than that, in fact. With his latest round of donations to various Republican-aligned PACs, his giving this cycle is approaching nearly half a billion dollars. That is a record for a single individual for a single cycle (with the caveat that, because of Citizens United, not all contributions are publicly known).

Our Take: Most of Musk's money is likely to go to waste, just as it did in the Wisconsin Supreme Court election. Will he finally get the message that he's not very good at this?

We have more, but this overall posting is getting pretty long, so we'll hold the rest to next week. Trump probably won't do anything crazy, right? So we'll have time to catch up, right? (Z & A)

I Read the News Today, Oh Boy: Lusitania Survivor Frank "Lucky" Tower Wasn't So Lucky

(Z) read, and enjoyed, many of Robert Ripley's "Believe it or Not" books as a kid. Very interesting stuff, so it was disappointing to learn, later in life, that Ripley played a bit fast and loose with his fact-checking. Basically, if a "fact" was extra cool, he didn't subject it to TOO much scrutiny, at risk of proving it false. So it is with one of his most famous "Believe it or Not" claims, namely that a man named Frank Tower was a professional coal-breaker who had the misfortune to be on board the RMS Titanic, RMS Empress of Ireland and RMS Lusitania when those three ships sank (in 1912, 1914 and 1915, respectively), but the very good fortune to survive all three. For this reason, Tower allegedly became known as "Lucky" Tower. The only problem with the strains-credulity-beyond-all-belief story is that this man never existed. Still, because of Ripley, the tale gained wide circulation, and is still repeated as true in some places today.

We gave two hints for last week's theme. On Friday, it was "[A]nyone who solves it should take a bow. Although perhaps a stern one." And on Saturday, it was "Think about Walt Whitman's most famous poem."

And here is the solution, courtesy of reader J.M. in St. Lawrence County, NY:

• TrumpWatch 2026: Democrats Have a Rich Bounty from Which to Choose — Mutiny on the Bounty
• All Politics Is Local, Part I: Fourth and Final Maine Senate Debate Is in the Books — "Remember the Maine!"
• All Politics Is Local, Part II: Another Legal Victory for California Will Soon Be upon Us — HMS Victory, Nelson's flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar.
• All Politics Is Local, Part III: We Continue to Monitor the Texas Senate Race — Monitor vs. Merrimack
• I Read the News Today, Oh Boy: The Utah Jazz — USS Utah, "The Forgotten Ship of Pearl Harbor." It was the first battleship hit in the Pearl Harbor attack, still sunk in Pearl Harbor on the opposite side of Ford Island from the USS Arizona
• This Week in Schadenfreude: Trump Administration Rocked by Battles of Titanic Proportions — RMS Titanic, site of famed submersible sinking
• This Week in Freudenfreude: The Constitution Is the Book That We Look to First — USS Constitution, "Old Ironsides"

Yes! This item's headline adds the Lusitania to the list (and notice that the only way to get to be a really famous ship is for some sort of disaster to strike). From the Friday hint, "stern" and "bow" are parts of a ship, of course. And, as to the Saturday hint, Walt Whitman's most famous poem is "O Captain! My Captain!"

Here are the first 60 readers to get it right:

D.E. in Ann Arbor, MI S.J.V. in New York City, NY R.H. in Phoenixville, PA J.S. in Washington, DC M.M. in Dunellen, NJ E.J. in Homewood, AL R.S. in Landing, NJ T.F. in Craftsbury Common, VT W.A. in Red Lion, PA C.B. in Lakeville, MN R.S. in Milan, OH J.S. in Chevy Chase, MD V.L. in Chester, CT P.R. in Kirksville, MO M.S. in Canton, NY K.G.W. in Lafayette, IN R.D. in Cheshire, CT S.L. in Glendora, CA G.M. in Tunis, Tunisia R.B. in Richmond, VA S.K. in Ardmore, PA C.G. in Pflugerville, TX J.T. in Philadelphia, PA G.W. in Avon, CT P.L. in Skövde, Sweden A.B. in Naperville, IL R.H.O. in Portland, ME T.K. in Half Moon Bay, St. Kitts M.W. in Altea, Spain E.E.M. in Richmond, VT

J.M.R. in Muncie, IN P.A. in Redwood City, CA S.M. in Warren, MI J.T. in San Diego, CA J.C. in Johns Creek, CA K.H. in Albuquerque, NM M.W. in Chicago, IL A.A. Branchport, NY A.D. in Gaithersburg, MD B.K.J. in San Diego, CA J.B. in Austin, Republic of Gilead (formerly TX) S.D. in Cedar Park, TX B.F. in Nashville, TN T.K. in Manchester, MO W.D. in Rancho Santa Fe, CA M.T. in Wheat Ridge, CO S.C. in Virginia Beach, VA V.F. in Bowie, MD M.J.S. in Gig Harbor, WA D.L. in Uslar, Germany E.P. in Windham, CT B.C. in Manhattan Beach, CA D.P. in Mt. Rainier, MD P.C. in Vero Beach, FL T.V. in Dinwiddie, VA R.C. in Des Moines, IA T.A. in Apex, NC M.K.M. in Marblehead, MA D.S. in Fort Collins, CO B.J.L. in Ann Arbor, MI

The 60th correct response was received at 7:27 a.m. PT on Friday.

For this week's theme, it relies on one word in some headlines, more than one word in others and it's in the category Arts & Entertainment. For a hint, we'll say that the theme is very timely. Like, within the last 24 hours, as of the moment that we publish this. Maybe even the last 12 hours.

If you have a guess, send it to comments@electoral-vote.com with subject line October 23 Headlines. (Z)

This Week in Schadenfreude: Trump Is No Longer FIFA's Top Gun

When the Nobel Peace Prize recipient for 2026 was announced last week, and was someone other than Donald Trump, Trump was, of course, incensed. He has fully internalized the spin that he somehow singlehandedly ended seven, or eight, or nine wars, or whatever number it is this week. He has also climbed whatever cognitive hill you have to climb in order to believe that the people who hand out the PEACE prize are willing to completely overlook that he almost singlehandedly started a war in Iran, with all its deleterious and ongoing effects.

But at least he still has one peace prize, right? The one he got from FIFA? Yes... for now. But since Trump was "recognized" with that pseudo-award, a few things have changed. To wit:

1. FIFA president and Trump buddy Gianni Infantino is trying to be reelected to another term.
   
   
2. Infantino in particular, and FIFA in general, have to be worried about FIFA's partners going forward, such as 2030 World Cup hosts Portugal/Spain/Morocco. And Trump is hated, hated, hated in those places.
   
   
3. Infantino in particular, and FIFA in general, have to be less worried about Trump and the U.S., since the 2026 World Cup is over, and there's no longer any risk of "someone" throwing a tantrum and finding a way to gum up the works.

Given these things, it's not too much a surprise that FIFA is now reviewing the prize, to assess whether or not it should have been awarded.

The proximate cause of this investigation is a formal complaint filed by a British human rights group, in which they observe (correctly) that FIFA's bylaws require it to be neutral, and that polishing Trump's apple in that way does not seem to comport with "neutral." And so, as FIFA Vice President Debbie Hewitt told the British press, a FIFA panel will take another look at the situation:

They will consider, first of all, how the Peace Prize came about, whether it should have come about, whether it should have been awarded in the way that it was, who made that decision and whether or not it should be taken out or whether it should be reformed.

Counting on FIFA to do the right thing is not usually a wise choice. On the other hand, poking Trump in the eye is also the politic thing to do, and FIFA tends to be VERY politic.

If the award is withdrawn or canceled, Trump will blow a gasket. He might well try to declare war on Switzerland, since that is where FIFA is headquartered. But much of the rest of the world will feel (and already is feeling) a bit of schadenfreude at his expense. Of course, even if the FIFA Peace Prize turns into the world's most impressive doorstop, Trump still has the "Champion for Freedom Award" that Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) gave him. That one is totally legit. Scott certainly did not go down to his local Things Remembered and have them knock that one out for 40 bucks plus tax. No, siree. (Z)

This Week in Freudenfreude: Hopefully This Cheers up Acton, Omar

It has undoubtedly been a difficult week for Amy Acton. Not only does she get to deal with the stresses of being in the home stretch of a major political campaign, but she also gets to re-live the trauma inflicted upon her by a predator half a century ago. Oh, and she also gets to do lots of interviews in which she has to defend her integrity. Not so fun.

We hope it makes things at least a little better that Acton has abundant evidence that some sizable segment of the American people has her back. To explain, let us share a letter we got from reader D.E. in Lancaster, PA:

Regarding the Vivek Ramaswamy ad, which he has now claimed as his own, I have never seen a more repulsive ad in my life. As someone who experienced a physically abusive father (as a 9-year-old, he repeatedly slammed my head against the oven door while thrashing me with the wire end of a fly swatter), my heart goes out to Amy Acton. This was completely unnecessary and we need to reinstate decency and norms back into public discourse.

I have a political philosophy that while I might find candidates in other states interesting, I don't contribute money to their campaigns because I think candidates should get campaign donations from the people they hope they will represent. Even though I have been very interested in the campaigns of Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA), James Talarico (D) and Abdul El-Sayed (D), and despite being drowned in requests for a donation, and even though one could make the compelling argument that running for Federal office will affect every state, I still refrained from donating.

Similarly, I knew that Acton was running for governor of Ohio against Vivek Ramaswamy, who even before this, I thought of as a loathsome individual. I not only know next to nothing about the issues Acton is running on, I really have no place donating as someone who doesn't live in Ohio. Then came this vile attack ad and I broke my own "rule" and made a donation to Acton's campaign. I did so not to influence politics in another state, but to, in my own small way, let Acton know that there are decent people in America who find this kind of garbage so very repellent.

I hope this backfires spectacularly on Ramaswamy, who definitely needs another "r" in his name. I know that Americans value winning highly, but if you have to sink to levels so depraved of human decency to win, maybe you don't deserve that victory. Let us not forget when Ramaswamy was running for President, during a GOP debate, he tried to smear Nikki Haley's daughter to make what he thought was a valid point. Haley replied by calling him "scum." Seems like a pattern to me. Republicans, instead of trying to govern the House, you might want to clean yours first. Just say no to all the neo-Nazis and white supremacist hangers-on. Stop defending rapists and pedophiles. Stop with the corruption and appeals to the very worst in our society. Being a decent human being should be the first qualification for wanting to govern.

It would seem that others think as D.E. does. For example, First Lady of Illinois MK Pritzker immediately announced a $500,000 donation to Acton's campaign, for the exact same reason D.E. in Lancaster donated. And in the days since the ad was released, Acton's fundraising has surged, such that her ActBlue page has risen to be the #2 ranked page on the site, attracting more money than any candidate other than the poverty-stricken Talarico.

Similarly, Rep. Ilhan Omar (DFL-MN) has had a rough week. Her house was raided by the feds, under circumstances that look to be more and more dubious. She says, quite understandably, that she does not feel safe at either her Minnesota residence or her Washington, DC, residence. She is always subject to plenty of misogynist and Islamophobic invective, but the fact that she's back in Trump's crosshairs means it's increased dramatically in the last week. Read some of the comments on her social media and you begin to lose faith in humanity.

The good news is that, as with Acton, some of the Americans who are not, you know, misogynist Islamophobes, have gotten out their wallets to say, in some small way, that they are with her at this tough time. On the day the news broke, her donations jumped by more than 10,000%. And, in total, she's pulled in just shy of $2 million since her house was raided. That's an enormous amount for a House race, especially one that, let's be honest, was not in doubt (Omar's district is D+32). The money's still useful to her, though, as she can use it to support other candidates.

Anyhow, good on D.E. in Lancaster, MK Pritzker, and all the others who took a stand for basic decency. And have a good weekend, all! (Z)

Today's Senate Polls

By and large, the polls have been getting a bit tighter this week, which will make Republicans happy. There are two theories as to what is going on. The Republican-friendly theory is that pollsters have all moved to "likely voters" instead of just polling "registered voters," and likely voters are more Republican-inclined than registered voters are. The Democratic-friendly theory is that the pollsters are tweaking their models to produce closer races, so as to give themselves cover for whatever happens. (Z)

State	Democrat	D %	Republican	R %	Start	End	Pollster
Maine	Troy Jackson	49%	Susan Collins*	49%	Oct 16	Oct 20	Beacon + Shaw
New Hampshire	Chris Pappas	50%	John Sununu	43%	Oct 19	Oct 20	Saint Anselm Coll.
South Dakota	No Democrat	0%	Mike Rounds*	50%	Oct 19	Oct 20	Emerson Coll.
South Dakota	No Democrat	0%	Mike Rounds*	56%	Oct 12	Oct 14	Mason Dixon
Texas	James Talarico	49%	Ken Paxton	48%	Oct 17	Oct 19	Emerson Coll.
Texas	James Talarico	51%	Ken Paxton	49%	Oct 17	Oct 21	ActiVote

* Denotes incumbent

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