The last thing voters need in the runup to this year’s midterm election is another reason not to trust the results. Unfortunately, the primary season has been marred by polling scandals that are catnip for conspiracy theorists and bad for democracy.
Fishback lost the GOP primary to Rep. The paper reported that Patriot Polling hadn’t responded to its inquiries, but both polling groups have subsequently been banned from popular poll-tracking websites. “It also claimed that Bass had won support from a vast majority of voters who supported insurgent Republican Spencer Pratt in the primary election. The Bass campaign trumpeted the results, which had been reported in several local news outlets, but it had to delete the social-media post after Median Strategies acknowledged the poll was a sham. In the Wisconsin Democratic race for governor, Democratic socialist Francesca Hong had a comfortable lead, according to the public opinion polls, but she lost to David Crowley. The challenge for Republicans in November won’t be dastardly pollsters.
Mr. Byron Donalds, who will face Democrat David Jolly in the general election. Among those fooled was the re-election campaign of Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass. It would be more comforting if we could blame all polling misses on frauds and pranksters, but the reality is that even the professionals have been way off in some of this year’s high-profile primary races. This fuels conspiracy theories and breeds general cynicism about the integrity of elections. In the Michigan Democratic Senate primary, reputable polls had progressive Abdul El-Sayed leading by double digits, yet he beat moderate Rep. Haley Stevens by a single point. Polling for the general election is likely to be more reliable, and right now that should worry Republicans more than Democrats. To win back control of the Senate, Democrats need to win a net four seats. It will be historical trends that show a high correlation between a president’s job-approval rating and his party’s performance in midterm elections. Mr.
Since 1950, when a president’s job approval is above 50%, his party’s average loss of House seats has been 14, veteran Republican pollster Whit Ayres told me recently. When job approval is below 50%, the average loss has been 32 seats. Trump’s approval rating currently sits at about 39%.
The Public Sentiment Institute issued a statement to the Hill newspaper that accepted responsibility for “disclosure failure” and “methodological error” but denied deliberately manipulating polling data. The poll purported to show the mayor “leading City Councilmember Nithya Raman by double digits—a surprising result given Bass’s low approval rating and her administration’s recent setbacks on homelessness,” CalMatters reported. GOP candidates are trailing in a least a half-dozen Senate races in battleground states, including Alaska, New Hampshire, Maine, Georgia, Ohio and North Carolina, according to polling data aggregator RealClearPolitics. But that’s according to the polls.
