America has a strange civic addiction: we distrust almost everything—institutions, media, elections—but we cling to polls as if they were prophecy. In The Margin of Terror, Dunneagin examines how polling has become a national pacifier, offering the illusion of progress without the burden of participation. Good numbers make us hopeful; they also make us complacent. Drawing on Trump’s return to power, media complicity, and the recurring fantasy that “this time the numbers will save us,” the essay argues that polls measure preference, not power—and that democracy fails when citizens confuse agreement with action. Hope may be rising again. The danger lies in mistaking polling progress for civic progress, and forfeiting the work required to ensure authoritarianism actually loses.
~Dunneagin
