Stress levels, unlike the stubbornly static polling margins, are climbing to astronomical levels as we approach Election Day. I’m getting daily texts from far too many friends about the state of the ground game, biased polling practices, and opinions about why Harris must do this and not that, or that and not this.
This isn’t helping anyone.
In the many post-mortems that will begin the second after the election is called, it’s unlikely that we’re going to look back and say, “If only we had stressed more about polls every hour of every day in the last month.” The deciding factor is unlikely to be too little anxiety or a shortage of doomscrolling.
According to a May 2024 survey by the American Psychiatric Association, 43% of adults say they feel more anxious than they did last year. And73% are particularly anxious about the presidential election. While we don’t often agree on the polls, there is wide consensus that stress is not healthy. There is—as a certain presidential candidate might say—science the likes of which we’ve never seen before that shows that when we live in a perpetual state of stress, it takes an awful toll on us. And that can include news-induced stress. A 2022 study in the journal Health Communication found that being addicted to the news was linked to both poor mental and physical health. “Witnessing these events unfold in the news can bring about a constant state of high alert in some people,” said Bryan McLaughlin, astudy co-author and professor at Texas Tech University. “For these individuals, a vicious cycle can develop in which, rather than tuning out, they become drawn further in, obsessing over the news and checking for updates around the clock to alleviate their emotional distress. But it doesn’t help, and the more they check the news, the more it begins to interfere with other aspects of their lives.”
The news cycle is unrelenting. In an interview with Walter Isaacson, Yuval Harari said that the most…
