GOP-leaning polls trigger questions about accuracy
Source: The Hill
10/19/24 12:00 PM ET
The prevalence of Republican-leaning polls in recent weeks is raising questions about their effect on the overall polling average as the presidential race between Vice President Harris and former President Trump tightens even further.
Surveys from pollsters that lean toward one party are a regular occurrence in presidential contests along with independent polling.
In recent weeks, however, GOP-leaning polls have flooded the zone, fueling speculation that they could be skewing perceptions of the race. But experts note their average models have methodologies in place to prepare for this.
“When you look across all the averages, the net effect is less than a point, if you take out the Republican polls, or the partisan ones, so to speak,” said Scott Tranter, the director of data science for Decision Desk HQ. “So I don’t necessarily think it’s a huge thing there.”
Read more: https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4941955-gop-leaning-polls-trigger-questions-about-accuracy/
The exact same thing happened in 2022 and the media generated a "narrative" of "Red Tsunami" from it, and started causing Democrats to shift spending that ended up unnecessarily putting resources in what were truly "safe seats" instead of some true swing seats that we could have taken (like Bobo's).
Just be aware that the GOP is now "flooding the zone" with their crap and the aggregators are eating it up with no impunity.
Bottom line -
= new reply since forum marked as read
but it gives an example as to what the goal was -
By Jim Rutenberg, Ken Bensinger and Steve Eder
Dec. 31, 2022
Senator Patty Murray, a Democrat, had consistently won re-election by healthy margins in her three decades representing Washington State. This year seemed no different: By midsummer, polls showed her cruising to victory over a Republican newcomer, Tiffany Smiley, by as much as 20 percentage points.
So when a survey in late September by the Republican-leaning Trafalgar Group showed Ms. Murray clinging to a lead of just two points, it seemed like an aberration. But in October, two more Republican-leaning polls put Ms. Murray barely ahead, and a third said the race was a dead heat.
(snip)
Ms. Murray’s own polling showed her with a comfortable lead, and a nonprofit regional news site, using an established local pollster, had her up by 13. Unwilling to take chances, however, she went on the defensive, scuttling her practice of lavishing some of her war chest — she amassed $20 million — on more vulnerable Democratic candidates elsewhere. Instead, she reaped financial help from the party’s national Senate committee and supportive super PACs — resources that would, as a result, be unavailable to other Democrats.
A similar sequence of events played out in battlegrounds nationwide. Surveys showing strength for Republicans, often from the same partisan pollsters, set Democratic klaxons blaring in Pennsylvania, New Hampshire and Colorado. Coupled with the political factors already favoring Republicans — including inflation and President Biden’s unpopularity — the skewed polls helped feed what quickly became an inescapable political narrative: A Republican wave election was about to hit the country with hurricane force. Democrats in each of those states went on to win their Senate races. Ms. Murray clobbered Ms. Smiley by nearly 15 points.
(snip)
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/31/us/politics/polling-election-2022-red-wave.html
That kind of mess happened here in PA in 2022 with the Fetterman-Oz race where 538 had Oz narrowly winning -
The "actuals" had Fetterman win by 4%, outside of their MOE.
As a further note - I noticed this year that RW polling outfit "RCP" (Real Clear Politics) has rebranded their polling operation to be called "Real Clear Polling", so they can fool people into thinking they are someone other than who they are - a RW pollster/aggregator.
ETA - and NONE of these pollsters ever foretold that PA Democrats would actually FLIP 12 state House seats and actually take control of the PA state House for the first time in a dozen years. NONE.
