538: Most Primary Polls So Far Are Internal Polls. That's A Problem.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

Interested in who’s going to win the Republican primary for U.S. Senate in Ohio in a few months? Well, we’ve got good news and bad news for you. The good news is that there are already 22 polls of the race! But the bad news is that 21 of them are internal polls.

Internal polls are polls sponsored by either a candidate running in the race or an outside group that has endorsed one of the candidates. In other words, these are polls that have an agenda behind them — and that agenda is usually to make their preferred candidate look good. As a result, they are usually too good to be true for their sponsor. FiveThirtyEight editor-in-chief Nate Silver found in 2017 that internal and partisan polls conducted during the last three weeks of U.S. House general elections overstated their party’s candidate by an average of 4 or 5 percentage points.

This poses a serious problem for people (like us) just trying to get an honest read of a race — especially if internal polls are all (or most) of what we have to go off. And unfortunately, that’s not just the case in Ohio this year; it’s true in primaries nationwide.

We hunted down every poll we could find of 2022’s Senate, House and governor primaries (as of Feb. 10 at 3 p.m. Eastern), and a majority of them (at least 118 out of 229) are internal polls. And while we have polling data for a healthy 78 primaries so far (that’s good), that polling is 100 percent internal in 23 of those primaries (that’s bad).

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/most-primary-polls-so-far-are-internal-polls-thats-a-problem/

[Lovie777]

1. My gosh 538 . ....

I've figured that out a long time ago.

[WillUSAF]

2. VA native living in Ohio here

There is a HUGE problem in this state. There are 3-4 Rs running to the extreme right angling for Orange Fat Guys endorsement. Earlier this week the state Supreme Court shot down the Rs gerrymandering. Statistics show that just 54% of Ohio vote R. We as Dems are being gerrymandered to death. If memory serves me the latest chart gave the Dems only 3-5 majority seats. THey are breaking up the metro cities here (Cincy, Cleveland, Columbus, Youngstown, Toledo) that have voted blue for decades.

Another thing that is completely unfair, and I'm not sure why it is not illegal, is that Gov DeWine has to sign off on the congressional seating chart. These lawsuits for gerrymandering are going to the state Supreme Court where his son is a member. He should be recused in my opinion.