Two big things baffle me about this US election. The first is: why are the polls so immobile? In mid-June, the race between President Joe Biden and Donald Trump was neck and neck. Since then, we’ve had a blizzard of big events, and still the race is basically where it was in June. It started out tied and has only gotten closer.

We supposedly live in a country in which a plurality of voters is independent. You’d think they’d behave, well, independently – and get swayed by events. But no. In our era, the polling numbers barely move.