Editor's Notes: Freedom Means You Don't Know How People Will Vote

I am anxious about the midterms.

I know that I am not alone. If you're reading this, you are very likely in the same boat.

Odds are you're reading or watching or listening to horse race coverage, indeed you probably did so today. Perhaps you've followed election forecasters like Nate Silver or G. Elliott Morris closely.

It's futile. Consider: even if they are correct, you will not know they are correct until we actually know the outcome, at which point whether or not they were correct becomes irrelevant.

There's no shortcut to election day, to the final tallying of votes. In the video above, I discuss the range of possibilities given very minimal assumptions at polling error. I'll break it down more below, but the bottom line is that the uncertainty is not something any analysis can do away with.

But it can help us understand the stakes more concretely. I can't promise that will make you feel any better.