Anderson edited "Leveraging: A Political, Economic and Societal Framework" (Springer, 2014), has taught at five universities and ran for the Democratic nomination for a Maryland congressional seat in 2016.
The midterm elections, which of course are not over, confirmed once again that polls used to predict who will most likely win an election, though they have value, do not have that much value.
Social scientists and journalists who try to use data and focus groups to predict the outcome, of one election or hundreds, must be given less attention going into an election. There was no "red wave." The Senate has stayed in Democratic hands. The House will probably go to the Republicans, but this is not a certainty. What seems clear is that the Republicans will have a slim majority if they do seize control.
The political class needs to stop paying so much attention to what social scientists, journalists and party leaders predict. The public apparently was not paying attention. The voters get bombarded with wrongheaded predictions and in some cases overcome it.
There is a better way.
In the future, the public would benefit from more normative (value-based) arguments for why one candidate rather than another, or one party rather than the other, should be followed. Arguments for why you should vote for one candidate or why you should not vote for another are both normative as opposed to factual arguments.
The key is for these normative arguments, rather than preconceived notions, to dominate the attention of voters. For example, there’s a preconceived idea that in a midterm election the party which is not represented in the White House should gain seats in Congress.
Moreover, it is not just a question of the amount of polling and the amount of normative arguments that we have. It is a question of what role these considerations play in campaigns and in party posturing overall.
In the current political environment, polls and the party predictions frame the elections, and the arguments for and against candidates take place within that framework. The framework, in other words, provides a narrative that shapes the way voters perceive the arguments for and against candidates.
What we need, instead, is a normative framework that is animated by values associated with either the party perspective or the candidate perspective.
Within those normative frameworks we do need facts to be used by parties and candidates to provide support for their arguments. Facts about crime, poverty, climate control, child care needs, inflation, taxes, infrastructure deterioration, scandals and so on.
So we have things completely backward now. Factual arguments, especially predictions (which make the case for what will in fact be the case), frame our elections. And value arguments for what voters should choose arise within these frameworks.
But we need the opposite: Normative arguments for the party perspective and/or candidate perspective need to frame elections, and within that framework factual arguments are needed to support the value positions. The overarching narratives should be about values and what parties stand for and what candidates stand for, not predictions based on polling data or lessons journalists have learned over the years.
Values supported by facts must drive our elections. Then voters will decide for themselves who to vote for and they can weigh the arguments for the candidates and consider the factual evidence they bring forth to support their policy positions and visions.
This is not to say that value positions are based solely on facts. They are not. And facts are always in dispute, which is reality. But predictions from social scientists, journalists and party leaders should be given less emphasis and not be used to frame our elections.
There are 435 Congressional elections and more than 30 Senate elections every two years, not to mention all of the state and local elections. Each race is different.
But there should be no overarching framework animated by very unreliable predictions about how things probably will be. Instead, there should be frameworks animated by forceful arguments about how things should be.
If we reverse the role played by values and facts in our elections, this would make a world of difference. How to achieve this is a different question, but it is important to set a goal worth fighting for.
Americans across the political spectrum have continued to ask about the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s connections among the political elite. (Angela Weiss/AFP)
Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner speaks to voters at a town hall at the Elks Lodge 188 on June 7, 2026, in Portland, Maine.
McConnell and Platner both feel entitled
The two men could not be more different. One, a Republican, octogenarian, seven-term Southern senator, the other a progressive, millennial Maine oysterman who’s never spent a day in elected office.
But Mitch McConnell, the senior senator from Kentucky who’s been MIA for the past few weeks and Graham Platner, the Maine Senate candidate who’s facing calls to drop out of his race against Sen. Susan Collins, apparently do have something in common: an outsized sense of entitlement.
McConnell, who is 84 and not running for reelection, has been hospitalized for three weeks, and yet we still don’t fully know what he was admitted for or what his condition is. Per CNN, “his office has not disclosed a medical reason for the hospitalization or provided specifics on his health status beyond saying last week that he ‘continues to improve’ and ‘is working closely with his staff on Kentucky and Senate matters.’ ”
While several legislators have said they’ve talked to him and insist he sounds strong, others have said they are completely in the dark. One MAGA influencer, Laura Loomer, posted ”High level source close to the White House tells me ‘Mitch McConnell is officially brain dead. He’s not coming back.’ ”
Meanwhile, up in Maine, Platner has been artfully dodging calls from his own party to drop out of his race after several allegations of misconduct from women, including a sexual assault allegation from a former girlfriend, came to light. While Platner, who has managed to survive a Nazi-tattoo scandal, a sexting scandal, and several old tweets scandals, denies the allegations, he has not quit.
High-profile Democrats including Sens. Bernie Sanders and Chuck Schumer, the latter of whom had unsuccessfully hand-selected Maine Gov. Janet Mills to face Collins instead of Platner, have urged Platner to drop out, while other Dems have accused him of trying to influence the picking of his replacement.
Maine Democratic Party Executive Director Devon Murphy-Anderson released a statement Tuesday, which said in part:
“Unfortunately, Graham Platner’s team has repeatedly reached out to us in an attempt to put their thumb on the scale of what this process looks like. We have repeatedly reiterated to Graham Platner’s team that they have no role in determining our next Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate nor in determining what this process looks like.”
Both incidents show a deep lack of accountability to voters, who in one case deserve to know whether their senator is capable of performing his duties, and in another deserve a candidate who isn’t being accused of crimes, bigotry and deception.
The offensive and odious entitlement of both McConnell and Platner stands out not because it is particularly unique among today’s political class. Tom Kean, the New Jersey GOP congressman, missed more than 100 votes, only sharing after a three-month mystery absence that he was dealing with depression.
Former President Joe Biden’s Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin failed to disclose a hospitalization for prostate cancer surgery, flouting the established rules for Cabinet members and senior U.S. officials.
From Biden’s insistence on running for reelection despite his obvious cognitive and political weaknesses to Trump’s brazen flouting of laws and norms, few politicians seem to appreciate that their public service job comes with responsibilities to constituents, including transparency and honesty.
But both parties increasingly justify the chicanery, because the stakes of winning elections and keeping power are simply too high. But that’s no excuse. If we’ve learned anything over the past decade, it’s that character and accountability do, in fact, matter. And when we, the voters, stop caring about it, well, so do they.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.