US President Donald Trump disembarks from Air Force One upon arrival at Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport in Greer, South Carolina on October 21, 2026. Trump is in South Carolina to attend a rally ahead of... US President Donald Trump disembarks from Air Force One upon arrival at Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport in Greer, South Carolina on October 21, 2026. Trump is in South Carolina to attend a rally ahead of the midterm elections. (Photo by Kent NISHIMURA / AFP via Getty Images) MORE LESS

One interesting dimension of the “Wedgewood Polls” story I discussed last night is that Republican leaders are latching on to it as evidence that all the polls are fake or at least wrong. Normally you might see this as part of election denial or setting the stage for questioning results. Maybe it’s some of that. But this looks much more like trying to prevent the bottom from falling out in an already bad situation. If your core partisans think the election is already lost a chunk of them just won’t show up to vote at all. And that’s how you can take a bad election night and turn it into a disaster.

Here’s a tweet from this afternoon from House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) …

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