Are early voting numbers predictive of anything?

[EarlG]

4. I've decided to go full on zen for this election cycle :)

Like you, I feel like I used to have a pretty good handle on what was going on in the world of politics, but since 2016 I've been constantly baffled about where things are headed. Polling seems broken these days, with pollsters constantly shifting their methodologies to account for quirks in previous election cycles, only to find that they don't apply to new quirks in the next election cycle. Is there really a GOP surge? Did the post-Roe summer special election results mean anything in the long term?

I don't know!

I do know that if I grab on to any little piece of good data and ignore any piece of bad data, I'm just setting myself up for trouble. So I've decided that the simplest thing to do is stay away from polling, focus on doing what can be done to get out the vote, hope for the best, and be prepared for the worst.