Pollsters putting their thumb on the scales for Democrats

 Guy Benson:

Spencer touched on this New York Times analysis yesterday, which I think is quite interesting and speaks to at least some of the points I raised in my pre-Labor Day 'electoral lay of the land' post.  Polling errors have not been unusual or infrequent in recent cycles, with most of the misses inflating Democrats' standing, compared to their actual vote share performance when the votes were counted.  Some of the more infamous examples in the last few years were Florida's statewide polling in 2018 (both Rick Scott and Ron DeSantis were projected to lose, then both Republicans won), and Maine's 2020 Senate race: 


The final ten public polls of the race averaged out to a lead of more than five percentage points for Susan Collins' Democratic challenger.  Collins then won re-election by nearly nine percentage points.  The polling average misfired by about 14 points.  That's scandalously bad.  The last six public polls in the South Carolina Senate race two years ago showed Lindsey Graham leading his opponent by less than two points, on average.  In late September, one poll showed an exact tie; another showed Graham clinging to a one-point lead.  Graham won his race by more than ten points.  Similar patterns played out elsewhere.  Nationally, we've made this observation about the 'generic ballot' back in 2021:


In 2020, the 'generic ballot' average predicted an expanded Democratic House majority, with Nancy Pelosi's team leading by nearly seven points.  The actual margin?  Less than half of that, enough of a difference to allow Republicans to sweep literally all of the House races rated by the Cook Political Report as 'toss-ups....

...

There is more.

All the GOP needs to do is get a normal pickup in an off-year election and it will retake the House.  Having an unpopular President actually leads to even bigger gains.  The pollsters need to clean up their act to regain credibility.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Washington Post: Some Democrats eye adding more justices to the Supreme Court to change its ideological bent The once-remote idea has gained the attention of liberals angered by the GOP push to remake the federal courts. Probably the easy way to defeat this court-packing scheme is for Trump to propose doing the same thing now.  It would lead to Democrat denunciations and claims that it would be wrong, thereby blowing up any attempt by them in the unfortunate event of Democrats winning a presidential election.
Read more

29 % of companies say they are unlikely to keep insurance after Obamacare

Conn Carroll: A new survey of 368 midsize to large companies found that 29% of them are considering terminating their active employee health care plans when Obamacare is full implemented in 2014. Only 71% of employers surveyed said they did not expect to drop their health coverage, while 20% said they did not know and 9% said they were planning to exit. The latest survey, conducted by Towers Watson, echoes an ealier survey by McKinsey & Co. finding that 30% of private-sector employers were planning to drop their employee health insurance coverage by 2014. When the Congressional Budget Office crunched Obamacare's spending numbers, they estimated that only 7% of employees currently covered by employer-sponsored plans would lose their plans. ... This means the cost of the health care fiasco will be hundreds of billions more than estimated by the CBO and Congressional Democrat. It is also clear that Obama's pledge that you could keep your health care plan if you wanted t
Read more

Bin Laden's concern about Zarqawi's remains

James Robbins: ... Bin Laden suggests that President Bush should allow Zarqawi’s body to be returned to his family in Jordan, but this is a matter that is up to the Jordanian government, which so far has not shown much interest in facilitating a homecoming. Bin Laden mocks King Abdullah II, calling him a Coalition minion, and asking “w hat scares you about Abu Musab after he’s dead? You know that his funeral, if allowed to happen, would be a huge funeral showing the extent of sympathy with the mujahedin.” A large crowd would definitely turn out, though most people would be on hand to demonstrate their anger and disgust. Last November’s hotel bombings in Amman , masterminded by Zarqawi, are still fresh in people’s memory, and mentioning them to Jordanians has the same visceral impact as memory of the 9/11 attacks does here. Jordan has adopted a zero-tolerance policy towards those who choose to mourn the country’s least favorite son, and four opposition members of parliament who paid con
Read more