The 2022 Senate race was interesting for what it said about polling. I noticed that pollsters with lower FiveThirtyEight ratings tended to skew a trifle conservative, both during and afterwards, as did other pundits. For example, in my post-mortem summary, I said this about Senator Hassan’s (D-NH) reelection bid:
In New Hampshire, some conservative pollsters gave challenger Don Bolduc (R) a small lead over Senator Hassan (D), while others called it a dead heat. Then pollster Lowell Center gave Hassan a ten point lead, pointedly out of step with everyone else. Hassan’s final margin of victory? 10 points.
This was echoed in a few other races, such as Fetterman/Oz in Pennsylvania. It was as if the conservative pollsters were trying to generate enthusiasm for their ideologically aligned candidates, rather than just reporting their findings.
Maybe their adjustment models reflected a poor understanding of electoral realities. Or perhaps the electorate came late to the realization that Bolduc, Oz, et al, held deeply inappropriate views for Senators from those States.
So how is this playing out in the 2024 Presidential election? On Daily Kos, Kerry Eleveld has an observation on recent polling:
The Economist published a welcome reminder Sunday that not all polls are created equal. The outlet parsed the 538 aggregate of national polls, dividing them up by pollster ratings between the very good, good, decent, poor, and unranked. Generally speaking, the worse the pollster’s ranking, the better Trump performed in the survey.
- Very good (13 polls): Trump +.15
- Good (eight polls): Trump +2.4
- Decent (30 polls): Trump +1.7
- Poor (four polls): Trump +5.3
- Unranked (two polls): Trump +6.5
So it may be that, once again, the lower quality pollsters are trying to incline the playing field to the far-right candidates. Keep that in mind when my reader sees a poll. Here’s the FiveThirtyEight ranking of pollsters, dated late January of 2024. They’ve apparently switched from a letter grade system to a star system, 0 to 3 stars. And the above mentioned dead-eye Lowell Center? They have a 2.9 stars rating. Trafalgar, who had given Bolduc a small lead? Less than a star at .7.
