Polling stations open on Tuesday, November 3, for the 2026 midterm elections, and a good portion of the Second Amendment community has been told to expect the worst. My own experience, as a media surrogate for the Trump campaign and a member of the presidential transition team in 2016, is that this kind of forecasting deserves more skepticism than it receives. Republicans currently hold the Senate 53 to 47 and the House 218 to 214. Neither chamber is out of reach for either party, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling a narrative, not reporting a result.
What the Polls Sell
I spent two decades at some of the largest law firms in New York, around Wall Street investment bankers who are paid to predict markets. Someone who actually possessed a reliable formula for forecasting would not publish it. He would trade on it. Pollsters publish, because the publication is the product. Media organizations commission polls to generate stories, and campaigns use them to raise money and to discourage opponents. A poll that shows a race slipping away tells donors and volunteers on one side that effort is wasted. That is a reason to read it with care.
I do not say this to flatter myself. In 2016, the final forecasts gave Donald Trump a minority chance: roughly 28 to 29 percent at FiveThirtyEight and 15 percent at the New York Times Upshot. I judged that those numbers understated the race and acted accordingly. The forecasts were not frauds. They were estimates, and estimates fail.
The Record of the Misses
The documented record is specific. The American Association for Public Opinion Research examined 2020 pre-election polling and found an error that was, in its words, “the highest in 40 years for the national popular vote and the highest in at least 20 years for state-level estimates of the vote.” The polls overstated the Biden-Trump margin by 3.9 points nationally and 4.3 points in state-level presidential polls. The task force reported that the average absolute error in state-level presidential polls, 5.1 points, matched the average in 2016.
I would not overstate that finding. Polling error does not run in one direction forever, and the AAPOR task force called its own report inconclusive on causes. It did conclude that “at least some of the polling error in 2020 was caused by unit nonresponse,” including too many Democrats and too few Republicans among those who answered. My reading of that finding is straightforward. A survey can only describe the people who pick up the phone, and fewer people with every year answer a call from a number they do not recognize. A sample of two thousand respondents is then asked to stand in for millions of voters, and the distance between the two is filled with assumptions about who will actually vote.
That is why a three-point lead in a poll, in a year when the error has historically been of that size, is a statement about uncertainty and not about the outcome.
What Is at Stake for the Second Amendment
This is not a digression from Second Amendment law. Congress writes the statutes and funds the agencies that enforce them, and the party that controls each chamber decides what reaches the floor.
Control of the House carries consequences of its own. The Department of Justice now has a Second Amendment Section within the Civil Rights Division, led by Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon. A Congress under opposition control would be positioned to hobble that work with investigations and funding fights. Legislation matters as well. The 2025 reconciliation law reduced the $200 National Firearms Act tax on suppressors, short-barreled rifles, short-barreled shotguns, and “any other weapons” to zero, effective January 1, 2026. The registration requirement remains, so the work is unfinished, and I do not expect an opposition majority to finish it or to repeat that reconciliation vehicle.
I am not forecasting a result. I am saying that the policy difference between the parties on firearms is large, and that the consequences of a loss would fall on the same citizens who were told not to bother voting.
Closing
Gun owners have a history of being under-represented at the ballot box, and the people who build the narratives know it. The proper response to a discouraging poll is the same as the response to an encouraging one: vote, and bring neighbors and family members who share the commitment to the right to keep and bear arms. The history of the future has not been written. A poll cannot cast a ballot, and the margin of error is, in a close race, an argument for showing up.
This article is based on analysis by Professor Mark W. Smith, constitutional attorney and Host of the Four Boxes Diner 2nd Amendment channel. Watch the original video here. This does not constitute legal advice.