Every election since 2004 I've obsessively watched poll numbers, often checking several times a day in the months before the election. And my mood usually follows the latest polls until I check again. It's...really not a healthy or useful thing to do. I suspect I'm not alone...

I have OCD so it's particularly bad. It's like repeatedly checking sports scores and thinking that if I sit in a different position, the result will be different. Of course, the stakes are higher with an election. But then again, polls are not actual points going on the board.

Either way, it's just unhealthy. And in 2020 it's even more absurd since the polls have been so stable for months. As if the latest poll of Swing State X from B+ pollster Y will CHANGE EVERYTHING...until another poll from pollster Z with a B rating counters it.

I don't fault pollsters or aggregators or media for this, by the way. It's my choice to consume - and be consumed by - this extreme flow of information as if I was a day trader. But it's exhausting and yet addicting.

And yes, there are far more productive ways to help out a campaign. And I do some of that too. (Could always do more). So it's not like obsessive poll-reading substitutes for more productive engagement with politics. It just adds an unhealthy layer on top.

It's also weird following the 2020 election while writing a book about the 1860 election, and particularly the relationship between democracy and civil war. FWIW: No, I don't think 2020 leads to Civil War 2.0. There's nothing like slavery to divide Americans so viscerally today.

Beyond that question, though, there are some important parallels between politics today and the mid-19th century. And social media is a big one, especially the way it transforms far-away events into immediate localized threats. Telegraphic newspapers did the same in 1860.

People were obsessed with politics then too, of course. They didn't have polls, but there were state and local elections held throughout the year. And newspapers posted tabulations to be read as tea leaves for the coming bigger election.

Newspaper editors were closely aligned to parties, much has media has become again in the last 30 years. There was no pretense of objective journalism. Rumors and counter-rumors would take up lots of column space. Sometimes it would get very personal or even violent.

Trolling and mockery were the currency of mid-19th century rhetoric just as today. Complaints about mindless partisanship...and commitment to extreme partisanship...was just as strong. Policy platforms probably mattered more then than today. Party machines moved more in sync.

But in 1860 the "Democracy" (as the Democratic Party was popularly known) collapsed into two rival factions, ostensibly over whether there should be a Congressional slave code for the Western territories.

In the North, slavery had largely replaced nativism as the driver of politics by 1860. It was no sure thing in the mid-1850s that the anti-slavery Republican Party and not the anti-foreign/Catholic "American" (Know Nothing) Party would replace the Whigs as the "Opposition."

Newspapers were filled with "public letters" from disgruntled former supporters of Stephen Douglas or William Seward. Others would respond by doxxing (or trying to dox) the pseudonymed writer, often revealing them as utter hypocrites.

Accusations of fraud were rampant - moreso than actual fraud (though that really did happen much more than now). Every single election loss was because of a "suspicious increase in votes" from this or that precinct. There were also some key swing demos, like German Protestants.

Democracy was raucous in mid-19th century. It was all-consuming. It was a way forward for young people, rural and urban alike. It was a way for German and Irish immigrants to become truly American. And those excluded - African Americans and women especially - demanded inclusion.

Anyway, I've long digressed from my original point about obsessing over polls... I guess the point here is that this is an old American affliction, even if it manifests differently today than in the past.