During the final days of the 2024 election campaign I watched an interview with Matthew Dowd, a political pundit and consultant. He was the chief strategist for the Bush-Cheney 2004 presidential campaign and was an ABC News political analyst.

The interview focused polling and Dowd said the reason most polls were now worthless (or worse) is because they attempted to gather and interpret data on Republican and Democratic (and Independents, I assume) voters. As polls have always done. Dowd argued those terms don’t mean what they once did (and might never mean again). 

The GOP has been replaced by the Trump Party (or cult). And the various factions within the Democrat Party have coalesced into the Democracy/Decency Party. A party in opposition to everything Trump and his MAGA movement stand for.

He didn’t say whether current polling technology has the ability to identify and measure the Democracy/Decency Party, or if it ever will. Or if it will hold together in a post-Trump America. We’ll find out if Dowd was right on Tuesday.

If Trump loses he will –oh, the irony– have made America great again. Just not as he envisioned.