Once upon a time, in a land not too far away, lived a magical unicorn named the “October Surprise.” A month before the election, it could supposedly shock undecided or on-the-fence voters enough to change the expected outcome. Now, it’s elusive enough to raise the question: does it still exist?
Historically speaking, most of these late-race revelations didn’t really change the outcome anyway, only making them slightly more or less contested. According to Harvard Business School, “72 percent of voters make up their minds more than two months before the election.” In 1972, amidst Nixon’s Watergate scandal, two weeks before the election, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger announced that the Vietnam War was about to end, which somehow successfully distracted people and made them feel better, despite it ending up not being very accurate (the war ended two years later). So, that last-minute release of information helped propel Nixon’s landslide victory that year, although he was already winning.
And in the race of 2000, the main controversy was of course the case Bush v. Gore, but the race between the two also tightened just four days before Election Day. A FOX News report revealed Bush had been arrested for drunk-driving in 1976, and this revelation nearly pulled the plug on his campaign, causing him to narrowly lose Maine and several other states. Had he won those states, the chads in Florida wouldn’t have mattered so much. Ultimately though, the Supreme Court handed him the presidency so that scandal was buried to some degree.
Now, in the age of public scandals left and right, it’s hard to imagine a minor criminal act committed by a candidate, much less one from 24 years ago, making much impact on voters’ decisions at all.
For instance, Donald Trump’s 2005 Access Hollywood tape, in which he bragged about sexually assaulting women, was a red flag if there ever was one. That was released Oct. 7, and while it did lower public opinion of Trump, it’s pretty clear the effect didn’t alter the outcome.
In 2020, Trump’s record of scandals has only gotten more and more egregious: from being impeached, to paying $750 in federal taxes in 2016, to not promising a peaceful transfer of power, to calling dead soldiers “losers and suckers,” to praising white supremacists to discounting the validity of scientific evidence and his own government officials, the list grows every day. So much happens it’s hard to recall even a fraction of it.
This immunization to dramatic news is part of why the October surprise is diminishing in impact. With misinformation rampant on social media and people responding to increasingly radical events in radical ways, it feels like nothing new could faze us.
In 2016, Trump said himself that he could “stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody” and he “wouldn’t lose any voters.” This is becoming one of the truest things he has ever said as it seems more and more feasible with every new “bombshell” report– if this headline came out today, it might just be another cog in the weekly news cycle.
The October surprise is also curtailed by the single-issue voter. In this year, the candidates stand wildly opposite on key issues including abortion rights, racial justice, climate change and gun control. On any one of these, and other, topics, voters might decide to neglect all others in favor of their most valued one. So if a surprise comes out, no matter how dramatic, if it’s unrelated to that exact issue, people simply might not care.
In a similar way, if a voter is still undecided between the two presidential candidates at this point, it’s difficult to imagine what could possibly happen to change their mind. After everything that has come out about the pasts of both candidates, which have been well-explored by each others’ campaigns, it seems unlikely that one more bad word or misdemeanor being reported could sway many votes.
In the end, it’s clear the already rare unicorn is dying out. In an era where the news is full of various scandals every day, no new event will be the straw that breaks the camel’s back, when it seems like the camel’s spine is made of steel.
Image courtesy of peterjr1961/Flickr
