Kamala Harris is stable in the polls. This is why Democrats are panicking.

Three weeks from Wednesday, every valid ballot for the 2024 presidential election will be cast. Election officials across the country will have worked late into the night to count millions of votes. On the morning of November 6th, we may finally have an answer to the question that those of us who work in or around politics have been asked constantly for months: “Who will win?”

Unfortunately, it's the one question that no one can answer with certainty. There is no clear result in sight. There are no debates waiting for Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump to share the stage. And there are no important events to mark on the calendar before polls open. There is only what seems like an eternity ahead of a race in which there is no clear favorite. The uncertainty is making these few remaining weeks particularly maddening, making the smallest possible shift seem monumental but leaving little room for fundamental change to the race.

In the 1970s, Japanese engineering researcher Masahiro Moti noted: “As we move towards the goal of making robots seem human, our affinity for them increases until we reach a valley that I call the uncanny valley.” The things that that rest in this valley can evoke a sense of deep unease, sorrow and dismay as our minds struggle to categorize something that comes close to being human but fails to make it. For me, this October is the uncanny valley of the election cycle. Americans are stuck between the momentum of summer and the certainty of November, looking for anything to break the tension. The elusive “October Surprise” has accordingly evolved from an event no one could have predicted to a quadrennial prediction that fails more often as pundits and politicians look for something — anything — to shake up the race.

Unfortunately, the most important balm we all turn to in these moments is not as healing as we would like. The latest NBC News national poll shows Harris and Trump in a “dead heat,” each with 48% of registered voters and a margin of error of ±3.1%. On the surface, this seems to be a big problem, as polls in September showed Harris with a 6-point lead over Trump and the same margin of error. In practice, however, the margin of error means that these two survey results are not as far apart as they seem. Additionally, these snapshots are our best guesses about how people in a respondent pool are feeling at the momentbut they are not the predictors that people would like. The utility of frantically updating poll averages is about as useful as staring into an empty teacup and searching for a sign among the leaves.

Polls showing a stable race after Harris caught up and then overtook Trump after President Joe Biden dropped out should provide comfort to Democrats. But panic is a tried-and-tested part of democratic identity, even when an electoral landslide is imminent. These final weeks are always a time of reflection, in which every decision the candidate has made up to that point is reassessed and every sign is a warning sign of impending disaster.

Unlike her predecessors' campaigns, Harris' campaign ran on a compressed timeline, and that compression comes with greater heat and intensity. And so a billion dollars since Harris entered the race is turning into a potentially worrisome sign that donors may not provide the money needed in the final stretch. Decisions about where to spend your time and what message to send there, who to interview and how to distribute resources among allies all become grounds for speculation about why Harris might lose.

The sheer amount of noise created when trying to understand everything becomes a problem in itself. We are awash in a sea of ​​opinions telling Harris that she needs to change her strategy in various contradictory ways before it is too late. These last few weeks are just enough time to make a ship the size of a presidential campaign, at least in theory, to focus on the One Big Thing that will ensure a victory. However, in such a close election there are so many different variables to resolve that it feels impossible to find a formula that will deny Trump a victory. The resulting calculus is that Harris' campaign is desperately trying to put together a coalition that can prevent this from remaining stable for the next 21 days. How do you both win back black men who are open to Trump's heavy-handed appeals while also identifying with the “Never Trump” Republicans you're courting? How to convince progressives to go to the polls despite their hesitation about American support for Israel's war in Gaza while focusing on slowing inflation and lowering consumer prices?

I'll tell you a professional secret here: I don't have an answer to these questions. Even the people trying to win this election don't know for sure. The next three weeks will be a time of significant unease as we look into the unknown. There is no quick fix that will calm tempers and reassure nervous Democrats. Instead, the most effective thing we can do to combat discomfort is to acknowledge the causes and work toward the changes we desire.