Republicans and Democrats brace for game-changing “October Surprise”
With less than a month before the very crucial mid-term elections, political pundits and experts are starting to gear up for the “October surprise,” the term given to a major news story that shakes up the outlook of the political landscape. This year, according to The Hill, “Strategists and political observers on both sides of the aisle are bracing for a dreaded October surprise in the final month before Election Day, wary of anything that could upend the political landscape and reshape the outcome of an already volatile midterm cycle.”
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One such report has already happened with allegations that GOP Senate nominee in Georgia and former University of Georgia football legend Herschel Walker paid for a girlfriend’s abortion over ten years ago. That example of October surprise was followed less than a day later by news that OPEC and allies would slash oil production, ushering in another rise in fuel prices just in time for the elections.
More potential shakeups in the wings are worry over the economy and the threat of recession as well as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s increasingly threatening rhetoric against the West while he manages the Russian war against Ukraine, as well as the ongoing congressional investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021 violence caused by a pro-Trump riot at the U.S. Capitol and the possibility they could release a final report before election day.
Voting via Flickr / Tim Evanson https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/
Mid-terms are always unpredictable, but this year is off the charts, according to Jon Reinish, a Democratic strategist:
“In ’18 – and a lot of other midterm years – you knew what was going to happen. There was a very consistent throughline. You knew a wave was coming. Now, we don’t know. And it’s the cause of much heartburn.”
He continued, noting that Democrats are at the mercy of any news that affects the national mood:
“For Democrats, if something happens to affect the national mood or the news cycle, it’s going to be a development outside of their control — gas prices, a foreign policy issue, an economic issue,.”
Voting Sign via Flickr / Kristin Ausk https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/
David Greenberg, history professor at Rutgers University, noted that the “original October surprise” came weeks before the 1980 presidential election, when the Reagan campaign feared that Jimmy Carter’s reelection bid could be saved by securing the release of the American hostages in Iran, which didn’t pan out. Greenburg noted that since 1980, the surprises have play out in many different ways:
“I think over the years, it’s sort of been watered down to refer to any surprising news that comes in October that might affect the outcome. Big news happens in October nowadays and we call it an October surprise. It’s lost a bit of its meaning.
It’s a cliché to say that a week is a lifetime in politics, but there’s always time for one more turn of the wheel. Since 1980 when the term was coined, a month has come to seem like a longer span of time. So maybe it should be a late-October surprise.”
