Predictions Failed Again (10 November, 2022)

To the editors (New York Times):
On October 19, you ran a story with the headline, “Democrats’ Feared Red October Has Arrived.” The story explained why the Democrats would lose badly in the midterm election, which was still nearly three weeks away. 
On October 25, you published a similar story under the headline, “Democrats, on Defense in Blue States, Brace for a Red Wave in the House.” 
I saw numerous articles discussing, at some length, how and why polling has become less reliable than it was in the past.  Yet, instead of accepting this fact, your coverage continued to focus on predicting outcomes.  It is past time to stop this harmful practice.  
There was a point in history when polls accurately measured public opinion, and reporting on polls actually made politicians pay attention to what the public cared about, but that time has passed.  That time coincided with a period of consolidated media everyone watched, and a resulting fundamental agreement on facts.  In today’s fragmented media world, that agreement is gone, and continuing to talk so much about what polls tell us is flat-out irresponsible.  It misdirects readers toward believing an election is already decided before it takes place.
Instead of indulging in lots of coverage about why the polls failed, again, and again investing in “improving/tweaking” your giant investment in polling and reliance on it, I suggest you redirect efforts towards looking at the outcomes, and the implications for democracy and creating a functioning government, for the US as a whole and in the many regional pockets where the outcomes brought different types of candidates into power.  
Coverage of candidates in terms of what they stand for and how they are likely to govern is overwhelmingly weak, completely out of balance from coverage of “who we think will win.”  That coverage bias starts incredibly early, is multiplied by covering who is most successfully raising money—with only rare mention that covering the “money race” reinforces the paradigm that Big Money wins.  Please consider digging into how these implicit biases affect editorial decisions across the spectrum of media, what does and does not get discussed/analyzed/presented publicly.  
An excellent point regarding one such bias came from Dahlia Lithwick, who wrote at Slate: “They told us the “Dobbs effect” was a mirage, that women were no longer energized around reproductive rights, that the messaging was all wrong, and that perhaps abortion was neither an economic issue nor much of a “kitchen table” issue after all. Or, at minimum, that one poll suggested as much, and that was sufficient reason to move on to the cost of gas, and crime. They told us, implicitly, that women were fickle and inconstant voters, and not to be counted on; that it was all a mirage, and that what happened this summer in Kansas and Alaska and Michigan and in the New York special election were all one-offs. All of them.”