Newsletter #161 - Election Vibes
The signs are there.
Vibe (noun) : a distinctive feeling or quality capable of being sensed.
In 2016 when Hillary Clinton was running for president against Donald Trump, despite what the polls were suggesting, something felt off. You could just feel it. And you could see it. I would see plenty of Trump yard signs. But not a single Hillary sign.
The vibes were off. Everyone knew it.
Granted, I live in a rural area of New York State that is majority “red,” so it’s not surprising you’d see a lot of Trump signs. But you’d think you’d see a trace of support for Clinton. Unfortunately, rightly or wrongly, there didn’t seem to be much genuine enthusiasm for her.
We all know what happened in the election.
Four years later, when Joe Biden was challenging Trump’s bid for re-election, it seemed like the more liberal people in my rural part of the country learned from the mistakes we’d made in 2016.
We needed to show enthusiasm.
And so the Biden signs appeared.
I even put one up. A member of the so-called “free speech” party promptly ran over it.
But you could sense the momentum. If people were putting up Biden yard signs in rural places where it felt like it could be risky, you knew there was a chance.
And Biden won. Of course he did—if you were looking around, you could sense he was going to. The vibes were right.
I am going to make a bold statement. I believe that vibes are a better predictor of the presidential election outcome than polls.
So this election cycle, I’ve been looking around again. Trying to catch the vibe.
There are significantly more Harris / Walz signs in my rural area than there were Biden / Harris signs four years ago.
My takeaway from this is that there is more genuine enthusiasm for Harris than there was for Biden four years ago, and that people are expressing that enthusiasm in greater numbers through yard signs.
Don’t get me wrong—there are still plenty of Trump signs around. (Some people never even took them down from last time.) I don’t mean for my selective editing of yard sign photos to suggest that is not the case.
But it does feel like there are fewer Trump signs in this part of the country than there were in 2020.
So based on these vibe indicators, the vibes seem to be in favor of Harris, at least in this part of rural America.
Of course, vibes can be misread, and it’s obviously impossible to know what will happen, especially with this country’s electoral process.
But there are positive indicators around.
For the next week, please do what you need to do to keep these vibes up.
Put out a sign, put up a sticker, phone bank, knock on doors, or even become an intolerable liberal in your Instagram stories. Argue progressive policy with a stranger in the comment section on your favorite social media app. Send a newsletter with photos of yard signs.
Do whatever you can do to keep the momentum going.
And don’t forget to vote.
We can do this!
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Don’t forget to check out my weekly Hotline Show.
Kristen Neufeld is not going back.
Zach Vitale voted early and flipped his ballot over.
This is making me feel hopeful.
I especially love the homemade signs.
I've noticed one shift in a rural part of Connecticut I frequent; there are many lawns displaying signs for local Republicans but without the Trump signs. I think four and eight years ago, Trump signs were there too. I hope this means something.