“The only poll that matters is the one on Election Day”: The standard spin move of the candidate who trails in polls. As the Rothenberg Report’s Nathan L. Gonzales wrote in a 2012 column, “This doesn’t guarantee defeat in the upcoming election, but it means you are losing the race at the time and have no empirical evidence to the contrary.”
Among those who’ve recently said or tweeted some variation on the expression is Republican Ken Cuccinelli, who lost his bid for Virginia’s governorship in 2013 after polls showed him consistently trailing Democrat Terry McAuliffe in the race’s concluding months. So did Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, after he was caught on video smoking crack and his approval ratings took a nose dive.
But winning candidates increasingly say it, too—just to ensure their supporters don’t get complacent and decide to stay home on Election Day.
