= new reply since forum marked as read
started at NPR I always thought she had quite a different slant to her stories. JMHO. Never cared for her at all. 
I have the posts to prove it, too. 
The "data" that 538 chose to use for this 2022 mid-year cycle was heavily weighted on KNOWN partisan outfits that they only tacitly admitted to. I.e., nonsense like Trafalgar and InsiderAdvantage, and in the most ludicrous move, a pair of high school juniors from just outside of here in Philly who created an outfit called Patriot Polling, who claim on their site to be "non-partisan" but was co-founded by self-identified GOP member.
There was an OP last month that discussed a NYT an analysis on what happened with the 2022 election and at 538 (notably since they were an outfit that NYT had contracted in the past and had given them their lifeblood boost back in the day) - https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/31/us/politics/polling-election-2022-red-wave.html
No paywall
The errant surveys spooked some candidates into spending more money than necessary, and diverted help from others who otherwise had a fighting chance of winning.
By Jim Rutenberg, Ken Bensinger and Steve Eder
Dec. 31, 2022
(snip)
But a New York Times review of the forces driving the narrative of a coming red wave, and of that narrative’s impact, found new factors at play. Traditional nonpartisan pollsters, after years of trial and error and tweaking of their methodologies, produced polls that largely reflected reality. But they also conducted fewer polls than in the past. That paucity allowed their accurate findings to be overwhelmed by an onrush of partisan polls in key states that more readily suited the needs of the sprawling and voracious political content machine — one sustained by ratings and clicks, and famished for fresh data and compelling narratives.
The skewed red-wave surveys polluted polling averages, which are relied upon by campaigns, donors, voters and the news media. It fed the home-team boosterism of an expanding array of right-wing media outlets — from Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast and “The Charlie Kirk Show” to Fox News and its top-rated prime-time lineup. And it spilled over into coverage by mainstream news organizations, including The Times, that amplified the alarms being sounded about potential Democratic doom.
The virtual “bazaar of polls,” as a top Republican strategist called it, was largely kept humming by right-leaning pollsters using opaque methodology, in some cases relying on financial support from hyperpartisan groups and benefiting from vociferous cheerleading by Mr. Trump. Yet questionable polls were not only put out by Republicans. The executive director of one of the more prominent Democratic-leaning firms that promoted polls this cycle, Data for Progress, was boasting about placing bets on election outcomes, raising at least the appearance of a conflict of interest.
Other pollsters lacked experience, like two high-school juniors in Pennsylvania who started Patriot Polling and quickly found their surveys included on the statistical analysis website FiveThirtyEight — as did another high school concern based at Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass.
(snip)
For a local example here in PA, the mess that came out from 538 about Fetterman's race was a case in point.
ACTUALS
That linked piece in the NYT is long but very comprehensive and worth a read. It carefully separates out the "data" crunching outfits - i.e., that from the 538s and RCPs that spit out what became a skewed "expectation" using heavily RW-weighted polls because there were "more of them" available to throw in their toxic stew vs the party internal polls, and how the media opted to go with the 538-RW lean, and actually insulted and skewered those who protested despite their actually HAVING the more accurate "data".
When has "YouGov been "heavily tilted Democratic"? YouGov is a UK Conservative-founded outfit that expanded beyond the UK into other countries including the U.S.
No it doesn't. You apparently didn't read it. The increase of "shitty polls" is what created the 2022 mess that 538 put out there. It's simply "garbage in garbage out".
I explicitly highlighted the problem that they ran into that they didn't have a way to correct, so they just stuffed MORE RW-leaning polls into their regurgitated nonsense.
I'll separate out the part so that it is easily seen -
The average voter, let alone the average non-politically geeky person is NOT going to just cherry-pick and "look at the polls". They end up (because there is more to life than "politics" ) getting spoon-fed "a narrative" and that "narrative" is informed from the data aggregators like 538. So when bad data is input into their aggregated models, the results are thrown off. Meanwhile the media will use that to inform their own opinions for how things will go.
This had gotten so bad that those who DID have better data, were laughed at by big media (this was in the article that you didn't read).
“These frothy polls had a substantial, distorting impact on how people spent money — on campaign strategy, and on people’s expectations going into the election,” said Steven J. Law, the chief executive of the Republicans’ Senate Leadership Fund, which poured $280 million into the midterms. Its own private polling showed no red wave at all.
So with the above news flash, even the big GOP outfits like Turtle's Senate Leadership Fund, KNEW there was no "red wave", yet the narrative persisted thanks to the shit that 538 and RCP were selling.
What? The issue here is aggregators like 538 and their "prediction" that Fetterman would LOSE by "0.5%" and the actual result was of him winning by almost 5%, which was outside of 538's margin of error.
Similarly a prediction of a Josh Shapiro 10% margin win ended up in an almost 15% one instead - https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2022-election-forecast/governor/pennsylvania/
ACTUALS (https://www.electionreturns.pa.gov/General/SummaryResults?ElectionID=94&ElectionType=G&IsActive=1)
So 538 blames it all on "Democrats 'outperforming partisan lean'" - https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/candidate-quality-mattered/
(meaning THEIR "partisan lean" )
It's this type of "garbage" that begs that the "business" needs to change its models.
Here in PA, despite yet another "narrative" that seems to promote the idea that Democrats ONLY "vote by mail". MOST DEMOCRATS here in the state of PA voted IN PERSON, which would be the DAY OF the election. AND here in Philly, the biggest city AND county in the state of PA, they did so by an almost 3-1 margin - (from here - https://results.philadelphiavotes.com/)
The state of PA has no "early voting", only "no excuse absentee (mail) ballots" or regular "absentee" (mail) ballots and otherwise voting "in person", and many of those mail ballots were sent out late due to printing errors or in the case of Philly, due to a snafu of needing to hold special elections for 4 City Council Reps who resigned to run for mayor in the 2023 mayoral race, they needed to set aside time for assigning ballot numbers for those candidates before they could print and mail the ballots.
The "narrative" of what happened in the debate supposedly torpedoing Fetterman's chances was the same type of RW bullshit ALSO embraced on DU that insisted that "the little woman" was more fucking interested in "inflation" and "the price of eggs" than ROE V WADE, and that we "better ditch the 'Roe talk'" and focus on "inflation" and "Social Security".
was an eye opener for me and I saw it first hand with what transpired here in PA with John Fetterman!
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100217509947
When Gallup messed up the 2012 general election predicting that Mitt Romney would win, after their mea culpa, USA Today, that had partnered with them for polling, dropped them after a 20-year relationship, and Gallup stopped doing the daily tracking polls for Presidential election trial heats.
It was very very frustrating here in PA with what they were doing with the narratives AND a lack of quality polls. So there was all the "guessing" and unabashedly filling in the gaps in the number of reliable non-partisan polls, with RW drivel ones.
A HUGE case in point is that NO ONE predicted that Democrats would flip the PA State House. NO ONE.
We gained 12 seats (for 102 (D) - 101 (R) majority) and right now, pending a special election for 3 (D) seats (1 to replace a state Rep. who passed away just before this past election, 1 to replace a Rep. who is now a brand new member of Congress, and 1 to replace a Rep. who resigned to become Lt. Governor), the chamber is at a standstill.
The GOP refuses to stand down so through an odd election of a (D) who indicated that he would govern as an (I) as Speaker (and not the GOP retaining the Speakership since we are still due to have the special elections where Democrats WILL BE in the majority), the state House is not in session, and the GOP is throwing fits.
I say tough shit.
So this is the type of thing that the aggregators missed and the so-called "accurate" polls ALSO missed. And this repeated in other states as well because Democrats managed to gain something like (IIRC) 4 "Trifectas". This in a year where there was a guaranteed RED TIDE that would wipe Democrats off the face of the earth. 
89% - YouGov
83% - Morning Consult
67% - InsiderAdvantage (Opinion Savvy)
66% - Trafalgar
Using numbers from their own website that judges how accurate each of these pollsters end up being in hindsight is being "extremely dishonest?"
No, I would say conflating inevitable leans from nonpartisan and relatively accurate pollsters with propaganda polling from partisan and inaccurate pollsters is what is "extremely dishonest" here.
I'll have to dig deeper because haven't seen his initial reaction to some bad polls seeping in toward the end. Everything I have read that he writes - he's very open about where his assumptions were wrong and stresses that he's not a pollster
knew some polls were jive? No way would I ever believe this!!! The man ( if you read his book) doesn't even care about politics!!!
Think ABC wants out for other reasons. Just my opinion
There are posts in GD right now boasting about some poll favorable for D's.
On the other hand, I was very optimistic for a Dem sweep in Pennsylvania. We knew Josh Shapiro would beat Doug Mastriano. And there was no way John Fetterman (our newest Senator) would lose to Dr. Oz. Even in the smaller races many new Dems rode the coattails of Shapiro and Fetterman, which flipped the Pennsylvania House of Representatives to BLUE for the first time in 12 years.
It didn't matter to me what the national pollsters were saying. I knew what was happening in my home state.
