Conservative Commentator Urges GOP Voters Not to Be Discouraged by Final Election Day Polling

With Election Day underway nationwide, a RedState columnist is pushing back against pessimism among conservative voters, arguing that discouraging poll numbers and a string of recent courtroom defeats in election integrity cases should not keep Republicans from the ballot box.

In a piece published Tuesday, RedState writer Jen Van Laar wrote that she had heard from “quite a few conservatives” who were demoralized and questioning whether to vote at all. Van Laar, who recently moved to northern Virginia, described her own hesitation about registering to vote and said she ultimately completed same-day registration before casting her ballot.

Van Laar pointed to the final New York Times/Siena poll, which reported what the Times called a “blue surge.” But she argued the poll’s own data shows a response-rate imbalance: according to the Times/Siena analysis she cited, registered white Democrats were about 30 percent more likely to respond to the poll than registered white Republicans, a gap the paper said was slightly wider than in 2020. The same polling found that late-deciding voters were breaking toward Republicans by 9 points.

“Weighting is not a panacea,” the Times/Siena analysis stated, noting that a poll can be weighted to include the right number of Trump supporters while still capturing “the wrong kind of Trump supporter.”

A Focus on Turnout, Even in Blue Strongholds

Van Laar argued that turnout matters even in heavily Democratic areas such as Los Angeles County. She quoted Roxanne Hoge, chair of the Los Angeles County Republican Party, who wrote on social media that Republicans need to match the organizing discipline of the Democratic Socialists of America and the Working Families Party. “We aren’t a lost cause. We are an abandoned cause. Change that today,” Hoge wrote, calling on the RNC and national GOP to invest in turnout efforts in California.

Van Laar said she has watched Democratic margins grow in California over successive election cycles as some Republicans have stopped turning out, which she said discourages investment in the state’s races and shifts GOP resources toward states like Texas.

Acknowledging Lackluster Candidates

Van Laar acknowledged that some Republican candidates this cycle have been uninspiring. She quoted Twitchy editor Sam J, who argued that even a flawed Republican candidate is preferable to a Democratic one, writing that the opposing party has “spent the last few years proving they will tax the oxygen you breathe, put a biological man on your daughter’s volleyball team, and then call you a bigot for noticing either one.”

Van Laar also referenced comments made on radio host Jennifer Horn’s show, arguing that voters should assume polls are designed to encourage Democratic turnout while discouraging Republicans, even when individual data points appear favorable to the GOP.

She closed by invoking a line attributed to the late radio host Rush Limbaugh — “It’s never going to be time to panic” — and pointed to what she described as Democratic efforts at “preemptive lawfare” and the recruitment of weaker candidates as evidence that Democrats are not as confident in their prospects as public polling might suggest.

The piece was published alongside an editor’s note from RedState describing the 2026 midterms as determinative for the agenda of President Trump and calling for Republicans to retain control of both chambers of Congress.