A new theory to the polling debacle.

Very quick update as I’m running behind. I had hoped to post this yesterday but no, other things got in the way.

I’m revisiting this topic of how did polling go wrong in the 2022 midterm. I gave out some possible reasons for saying that there would be a red wave and yet, the actual election result was more of a red trickle, leading the Democrats to be euphoric (when they probably shouldn’t).

Some of the reasons I posited were 1) pollsters did not speak to those who normally don’t show up at polls but did this time and 2) pollsters did not pose the questions in the right way, thus giving a different impression of what the responses meant. The post can be read here.

I either read or heard something different recently that was very interesting. I don’t know if it is true and I haven’t seen anything more since then, so I’m leaning towards being dubious.

But here’s another theory of why pollsters got it so wrong this election cycle of 2022 (as well as 2016, 2018, 2020): a few Republican pollsters whose polling were consistently wrong (their polling results consistently weighed in favor of the Republicans) would inundate the news cycle with many multiple of polling efforts, in effect, flooding the election cycle with a lot of polls indicating red victory. When the polling aggregators would combine all of the polls to get a national level view of polling results, the preponderance of those pollsters’ polls pulling in the Republican direction would indicate a red wave.

Now, I’m under the understanding that reputable polling experts, when they aggregate polls, they deploy a weighing process, giving greater weight to those pollsters who are more right than wrong over a period of time. Those Republican pollsters, whose polls were often far off, would be given a lower weight to make their influence in the aggregation much smaller.

So, I’m dubious about this new theory but it is an interesting one. I just don’t find it credible.