Pennsylvania

to an opinion column written in the rw Washington Examiner. The column was by someone promoting a new product or service from RCP. It was an ad, albeit a long one. The comment from Madonna was clearly written as the same kind of fluff one see on book jackets saying how great the book is. Do you not understand that?

Madonna has been doing political research for decades before RCP was even established. He's been polling Pennsylvanians for decades, too. He doesn't need RCP to tell him where Pennsylvania stands. College students might ask the poll questions, but they are not designing the poll. In fact, if you read the poll archives, the poll is consistent in how it words questions.

In 2018, polling showed Tom Wolf winning by over 15 pts, no pollster believed that was possible, but it was. He won by 17.

The 2016 and 2020 polls failed to account for the irregular voters that Trump, and only Trump, was able to pull out of the woodwork. This failure was for pollsters across the board, except Trafalger whose methodology includes "shy" R voters which turned out to be true in both years.

FTR, Nate Silver at 538 isn't a pollster. He's a statistician who just transferred his fantasy baseball stat models over to polls. RCP has an opinion research arm, but they list no original research of their own "horserace" polls on their website. It's mostly a news aggregator website and opinion.