Just about every election cycle, there’s an argument for why, this time, things might be different — different from expectations based on historical trends and key factors like the state of the economy or the president’s approval rating. The arguments are often pretty plausible. After all, every cycle is different. There’s almost always something unprecedented about a given election year — in just the last few cycles, the pandemic, the first female presidential major party nominee and the first Black president were all truly novel. There’s always a way to spin up a rationale for why old rules won’t apply.