Consider the obsessive coverage of a single New York Times-Siena College poll a full year before the election (touting four-times indicted former president Donald Trump as leading in five of six swing states, although only one was outside the poll’s margin of error). The Times built its political coverage around it for days. Virtually every cable news show featured it. (Full disclosure: I am an MSNBC contributor.) Other outlets focused on it. Roundtables gathered to discuss it. The coverage assumed the poll to be gospel — accurate, productive, important — and then used it as evidence that Biden is toast. (A majority of national polls, by the way, show Biden tied with or slightly ahead of Trump.)

But consider how utterly meaningless this poll truly was. First, it’s a year from the election. Go back to 2011 and 2012, and you would see the same hysterical predictions, from the same sort of premature polling, anticipating then-President Barack Obama’s political demise. Second, many other polls, including a highly reputable Pennsylvania poll, show Biden doing quite well in swing states. (As others have pointed out, even a Republican poll had Biden tied in Nevada, not losing by 10 points).

The Times poll had obvious anomalies (e.g., showing Trump trailing by one point among younger voters; Trump winning 22 percent of Black voters; Biden leading in Wisconsin by 2 but trailing in Nevada by 11 points?). Those findings don’t appear in other polling. But to put that in proper context would have killed innumerable news cycles. (By contrast, when The Post came up with a national poll, clearly an outlier, it said so.)

And sure enough, after fixating on the poll, the political coverage focused on “some” Democrats who were really nervous about reelection — largely because of the poll! (The easiest job in political reporting: finding nervous Democrats.) Some Democrats are not nervous; many Republicans are petrified about the perils of electing Trump. But these truisms are not apparently newsworthy.

Remarkably, all of this comes a year after many pollsters and analysts insisted the country was facing a red wave in the 2022 midterm elections. It might just be that polling is becoming less predictive of how voters behave — even though more and more commentary globs onto any survey that might gin up ratings.

Of course, the red wave never happened. Democrats gained one seat in the Senate might have held the House if not for redistricting subsequently invalidated or under review, and defeated a slew of MAGA candidates for governor, secretary of state and attorney general. One would think a modicum of restraint and humility might now guide coverage when predicting the downfall of Biden and his party.

Reality hit again on Tuesday. Voters in Ohio voted overwhelmingly to codify abortion access in the state constitution. A Democratic governor won reelection in deep-red Kentucky. Republican Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves barely won — akin to a Democrat squeaking by in a California race. In Virginia, Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin (over whom the media endlessly fawns despite his radical views) staked his career on winning Republican majorities in both state houses with the promise of new abortion restrictions. Democrats not only held the state Senate, but they also flipped the House of Delegates.

Tuesday night, cable news panelists appeared to be at a loss to explain Democrats’ triumph. Well, for the umpteenth time, we see that polling isn’t all that predictive. Aside from low-response rates and flawed modeling, polls simply don’t reflect how voters think. (Actual voters might scowl about Biden and all incumbents but crawl over glass to keep abortion-banning MAGA extremists out of power.)

Had the political chin-strokers been paying attention, they might not have been surprised Democrats did so well. Despite excessively negative coverage of the Biden presidency, Democrats have been on a roll. In addition to their midterm wins, Democrats had won all six ballot races on abortion, elected a progressive justice to the Wisconsin Supreme Court (in a race focused on abortion) and vastly overperformed in special elections.

Simon Rosenberg, a Democratic consultant who debunked the red wave, wrote after Tuesday’s results:

Of the 16 most recent national polls on 538, Biden leads or is tied in 9, a majority, and the average of them all is a tie race. Of the 7 polls where Trump leads 3 are Republican pollsters. So to be clear about what this all means – there is no conclusive evidence the race has swung against Joe Biden and the Democrats; there is no conclusive evidence the war in Gaza is hurting him; that what we have right now is a close, competitive election with the Democratic coalition wandering a bit a year before the election, as to be expected, giving us a lot of work to do; and finally, their guy, Trump, likely to become further degraded over the next 12 months giving us a chance to not just win in 2024 but win decisively.

That’s at least as plausible a take as the “Biden is doomed!” drumbeat we get from most pundits.

Laughably, the purveyors of “Biden is doomed” coverage will insist voters like Democrats but not Biden. That wouldn’t explain why voters didn’t vent their supposed anti-Biden anger in 2022. (Tying Democrats to Biden didn’t work in this election, either.) Other pundits insisted that election results don’t matter(!); instead, stick with their flawed punditry.

It’s past time to reevaluate political coverage. Polling fixation is unenlightening if not misleading. (Maybe get out of the crystal-ball business entirely?) Pundits insist the GOP debates without Trump are really important, but there’s no evidence they have affected the race. Nevertheless, endless analysis bookends the dismal affairs.

Political coverage could be different. Cover what is happening, including abortion rights organizing, job creation in the heartland, political activism among young people, internal migration’s affect on states and demographic changes since 2020. News outlets could provide insight into campaign operations such as political organizing, message testing and surrogate effectiveness. That would be interesting.

Many media outlets after Jan. 6, 2021, vowed to focus more on threats to democracy. (Occasionally, they do; but it doesn’t dominate coverage, as polling does). However, most are stuck in overhyped horse-race coverage and endless chatter over meaningless Republican debates.

Americans deserve better. Our democracy needs better.