Midterm elections are nearing, the outcome remains close, and many readers are eagerly — perhaps obsessively — watching the latest polls, trying to ascertain whether their side will prevail. With just a little more than seven weeks left in the fall campaigns, flocks of surveys on those and other close races have started to fly into view, touted in fundraising emails, bannered in headlines and clamoring for the attention of voters — many of whom say they mistrust polls even as they can’t stop looking at them.