The Polls Have Already Voted.

Good news: the election is over. The polls have voted.

CNN's Poll of Polls showed Democrats leading the generic congressional ballot by 9 points in its October 28 analysis, and the New York Times/Siena poll published October 21 put Democrats ahead 52 to 41 among likely voters. Both landed days before Election Day, November 3, which is to say before the only poll that counts has actually happened.

This is the pollsters' favorite season: the wave is declared, the narrative is filed, and the only remaining question is how big the wave will be — a question the pollsters have also helpfully answered in advance, in several sizes. The voters are treated as a formality, a rubber stamp on a result the press has already typeset.

There is just one problem with the pre-written landslide. The voters haven't voted yet. They have a habit of doing that on Election Day, in actual voting booths, sometimes rudely disagreeing with the people who already told them what they think. The pollster has pre-written the concession speech. Both of them. The voters get to edit on Tuesday.

The underlying reporting is filed in the Evidence Locker: CNN (Oct. 28, 2026); New York Times/Siena (Oct. 21, 2026).