The Federal Reserve looks poised to forgo a chance to prove its favorite points.

Officials have three mantras: Every meeting is “live” for an interest rate move, policy is data dependent and decisions aren’t politically motivated. They could match words with deeds by raising rates this week, but they probably won’t.

A rate hike at the Federal Open Market Committee’s meeting Tuesday and Wednesday would show they mean what they say. Economic data have been strong since it met last month. The decision comes just days before the presidential election. And there’s no news conference with Chair Janet Yellen – briefings investors have interpreted as prerequisites for a move so she can explain why.

Still, economists and investors don’t think an increase is likely. Inflation is below the Fed’s 2 percent goal. What’s more, the committee has a meeting in mid-December, so officials could wait to see how markets react to a White House win by Republican Donald Trump or Democrat Hillary Clinton and still deliver a rate rise in 2016.

“They’d love to prove that they can go in a non-press conference month, to prove that every meeting is live, and to prove that they’re apolitical, but the issue is the election,” said Gennadiy Goldberg, an interest rate strategist at TD Securities in New York. “It’s hard to communicate that even though they’re apolitical, they’re not blind to political risks.”

Officials expect to raise their benchmark rate by a quarter percentage point this year from a current target range of 0.25 percent to 0.5 percent, according to quarterly projections released in September.

Philadelphia Fed President Patrick Harker, in a rare admission that politics could weigh on the central bank’s policy deliberations, signaled that November may be a less-than-ideal candidate for a rate increase because of the Nov. 8 ballot.

“What I’m worried about is, depending on the outcome of the election and what happens after that, if there are policies that would have distortive effects that we would have to respond to,” he said after a speech Oct. 13 in Philadelphia.

In that case, “it may be prudent – and I emphasize ‘may’ be prudent – to wait until we resolve some of that uncertainty,” he said.

Still, the FOMC probably won’t mention political risk in its post-meeting statement. Doing so would be akin to painting “a bigger target on its back,” Goldberg said.

If the central bank says it’s holding rates steady because the election could raise stability risks, politicians could easily twist the statement to argue that it has a political agenda.