“Now the race is on, and here comes pride up the backstretch. Heartaches are goin’ to the inside.” – Don Rollins

This year is shaping up to be the biggest spectacle of a presidential campaign season since at least 1968. There are even a few similarities between then and now.

The 1968 race saw the last time a sitting president, Lyndon Johnson, decided not to run for reelection, despite being eligible to do so, until President Joe Biden suspended his campaign last month.

This year we had an assassination attempt on Donald Trump at a campaign rally while in 1968 presidential candidate Bobby Kennedy was killed following a campaign event in Los Angeles. Coincidentally, Kennedy’s son, Robert Kennedy Jr., currently is running as a third-party candidate for president.

In 1968 a protest turned into a riot as police and protestors squared off in the streets of Chicago during the Democratic National Convention. This year’s convention will also be in Chicago, though hopefully under peaceful conditions.

There are differences, too. In 1968, third-party candidate George Wallace carried the vote in a few states which has not happened since and is highly unlikely this year. This year Trump was convicted of multiple felonies in a New York state court while the candidates in 1968 were not facing any significant legal troubles.

Although this presidential race has some rare aspects, for sure, one troubling feature has been common for quite a while in presidential elections and continues into this year. This is the tendency of media covering the presidential election to engage in something called horse-race coverage.

What is horse-race coverage? It is when news coverage focuses heavily on polling surrounding the election. Much like a broadcaster calling a horse race, the coverage looks at which candidate is winning or which candidate is losing or which candidate is beginning to surge or flail in the race.

Why is this a problem? Polling at this time is generally useless for anyone outside the campaign itself. Between now and Election Day you will see both Trump and Kamala Harris go through a couple of peaks and valleys in polling based on events both within and outside their control.

Trump got a boost from surviving an assassination attempt, choosing his running mate and the Republican National Convention all taking place within a week’s time.

Harris cut into those gains when Biden decided to leave the race, and Democrats rallied around her. She is likely to benefit in the polls from national attention being focused on her during next week’s Democratic National Convention then level off afterward.

Coverage of the changing poll numbers is not the worst thing in the world, but it also limits the benefits our various media outlets are supposed to provide. Instead of educating the public about the candidates and their positions on real issues and how their ideas could affect our lives, polling coverage only narrows the discussion to the lowest common denominator.

Additionally, polling coverage tends to cultivate a herd mentality among the public. Some people just like voting for the winning horse instead of putting in the time to decide with which horse they likely agree.

This effect is less noticeable in our polarized environment with fewer people in the middle and more people voting as yellow-dog Democrats or Republicans, but it still makes a difference.

Finally, polling for presidential elections is more complex than any other election in our country because of the way we vote for president through the electoral college.

National polling results can be misleading. Twice since 2000 has a candidate with fewer nationwide votes from the public lost in the electoral college. The votes of the electoral college – where every state is provided votes equal to the number of U.S. House of Representatives members added to the U.S. Senate members – are what truly matter.

Polling in the few states where both major-party candidates have a legitimate chance of winning becomes more important than nationwide polls.

We also now have polling now where respondents can identify themselves as likely or unlikely to vote in the upcoming election which provides varying percentages to consider.

Of course, candidates will promote whichever poll or parts of a poll provide the numbers to make them look like they have the most support. In turn, this can cause their supporters to doubt the election results if they do not turn out in their favor. So, follow my lead, and pay no mind to what the polls say until maybe the third week of October. Presidential elections are a marathon, not a horse race, so save your attention for the final kick to the finish line.