'That's a real problem!' Experts expose 'potentially serious' issue with polling data
Donald Trump's recent momentum shift could in fact be an illusion, according to some experts.
Trump has recently overtaken Vice President Kamala Harris in certain states' polling averages, but the data also include a huge number of GOP-leaning polls that could potentially tip the scales.
The mainstream media outlets suggest that they have accounted for the GOP polls, but some pollsters aren't so sure, according to the New Republic's new reporting.
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TNR used the recent example of Trump overtaking Harris in North Carolina, and a GOP firm known as Quantus taking credit for it, to illustrate what the author said could be a problem.
"To proponents of what might be called the 'Red Wave Theory' of polling, this was a blatant example of a phenomenon that they see as widespread: A flood of GOP-aligned polls has been released for the precise purpose of influencing the polling averages, and thus the election forecasts, in Trump’s favor," the report states. "In the view of these critics, the Quantus example (the firm subsequently denied any such intent) only made all this more overt: Dozens of such polls have been released since then, and they are in no small part responsible for tipping the averages—and the forecasts—toward Trump."
The report further points to Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg and data analyst Tom Bonier, who "were skeptical of such predictions in 2022 and ultimately proved correct," and their warnings "that all this is happening again."
"In their telling, GOP data is serving an essential end of pro-Trump propaganda, which is heavily geared toward painting him as a formidable, 'strong' figure whose triumph over the 'weak' Kamala Harris is inevitable. This illusion is essential to Trump’s electoral strategy, goes this reading, and GOP-aligned data firms are concertedly attempting to build up that impression, both in the polling averages and in media coverage that is gravitationally influenced by it," the report says. "They are also engaged in a data-driven psyop designed to spread a sense of doom among Democrats that the election is slipping away from them."
All this "raises another problem—a potentially serious one," according to the author, columnist Greg Sargent.
"Rosenberg and Bonier, the leading critics of these polling aggregations, are quick to point out that even shifts of a small magnitude produced by GOP polls risk badly misleading people," the report states. These momentum reports could be the real underlying concern, according to Sargent.
"That's a real problem!" he added on social media in reference to journalists reporting on these minor shifts, which may be illusory.