Four weeks out from the election, and for most Americans, it’s time for football, foliage, and flannel. For politics watchers, all eyes are on an October surprise. They’ve been game-changers before.
In 2008, the collapse of Lehman Brothers, which ushered in the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression, was a turning point in John McCain’s presidential campaign. He was even with Barack Obama when the news broke, then trailed in every survey since. He lost the popular vote by seven points.
Surprises have come from home and abroad. In 1980, it was President Carter’s inability to resolve the Iranian hostage crisis. Eight years earlier, it was President Nixon’s announcement that "peace was at hand" in Vietnam.
Some have more impact than others. It’s not clear that news about George W. Bush’s DUI changed much about the 2000 election, nor that James Comey’s letter to Congress about Hillary Clinton’s email server was the decider in President Trump’s 2016 win.
Still, these surprises all have one thing in common: they happened in presidential years. EXPLOSIVE SLEEPER ISSUE COULD FUEL MIDTERM SHAKEUPS, TOP REPUBLICAN PREDICTS: ‘YOU’RE GONNA SEE SURPRISES’ It’s not as though we don’t get breaking news during the last month of a midterm cycle. Take 2018, when the GOP warned about a migrant caravan, Brett Kavanaugh sought a seat on the Supreme Court, and a gunman opened fire at a Pittsburgh synagogue.
But that was the exception, not the rule. For the most part, midterm October surprises affect individual races, not the overall trajectory of a party. In the last midterm, for example, Herschel Walker faced damaging allegations about paying for former girlfriends’ abortions, while in Florida, the destruction caused by Hurricane Ian gave Gov.
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