Electoral Uncertainty Quotes

Popular elections are uncertain.

The 2008 election settled nothing, not even for a while. Our national politics are reflecting what appears to be going on geologically, on the bottom of the oceans and beneath the crust of the Earth: the tectonic plates are moving.

One strange quality of writing about political campaigns is that it's a little like writing about a baseball game inning by inning. We presume we can say something about the final result from the state of play a third of the way through. You can when a game is a colossal blowout, but you can't when it's close.

There is only one redeeming thing about this whole election. It will be over at sundown, and let everybody pray that it's not a tie, for we couldn't go through with this thing again.

Electoral contests have nothing but polls, which is why people have grown so obsessed with them; we're desperate for an objective rendering of what is happening and what may happen.

As far as I know, the people who are against my candidacy now have the upper hand in the Kremlin. They say: Who knows what the election result will be? We already made that mistake once. And they are also afraid of all the things I would say if they let me run.

If Mr. [Donald] Trump is up 10 or 15 points on Election Day and ends up losing, then, you know, maybe he can raise some questions. That doesn't seem to be the case at that moment.

You just never know. Crazy things happen in elections.

Opinion polls often suffer on account of unexpected developments once the electoral process starts, such as the death of a political leader (as in the case of the late Rajiv Gandhi).

I think a lot of Democrats I know, who will vote in the Democratic primary and vote for the Democratic nominee and later general, they go back and forth between two feelings. One is oh, my God, I'm terrified. Maybe this guy will be formidable in a general.

If Scott Brown can win in a state that President Obama won by 26 points, I can win in a district that Obey won by just 20 points against an unknown, underfunded challenger in the Democratic landslide of 2008. It means there is not a single Democrat in the country who is safe.

I supported Bob Schaffer's three races for Congress. But we all had concerns about whether he could win statewide. Then my wife suggested that I get it.

There's no safe Republican district. You can run, but you cannot hide.

At the end of their first years, there are few people who would have predicted that Truman would be elected in 1948 or that Reagan would get a second term. It's always premature to make some kind of categorical judgment after the first year in office.

Republicans are going to have to ask themselves the question, do we want a candidate who could be tied up in court for two years? It'd be a very precarious one for Republicans because he'd be running, and the courts may take a long time to make a decision. You don't want to be running and have that kind of thing hanging over your head.

Colorado is a swing state, like Nevada, like North Carolina, like Florida. It all depends. [Donald] Trump has offended Mexicans and Muslims and millennials and some women. Will those offended people be energized to show up in the way that Trump supporters are energized to show up? It will be an energy.

Close elections tend to break toward the challenger because undecided voters - having held out so long against the incumbent - are by nature looking for change.

I've often thought that the gauntlet of American politics is more individualistic, more expensive, more unpredictable than in many other democracies.