Why Was the Polling So Bad?
Democrats are absolutely beside themselves with rage over… Well everything at the moment but they feel they have once again been betrayed by the polling.
This time they are completely right.
A while back, Disney subsidiary ESPN bought up Nate Silver’s 538 to help with their forecasting. It was actually a pretty smart idea.
Then 538 gets transferred over to ABC News, which takes it away from Jason Pitaro and puts it under the control of… You guessed it! Dana Walden.
Nate Silver “resigns” from the company he created and is replaced by G. Elliot Morris a 28-year-old flaming idealogue and journalist. This is when things started to go down hill fast for 538.
Rasmussen Polls were sent a few polite-ish requests for their procedures and some proprietary information. The boss of Rasmussen didn’t like how this smelled and refused. Sure enough, it was the equivalent of “We are going to write this story about you and feel you should have a chance to tell your side of the story.” It was obviously a trap.
Sure enough, Disney’s 538 sends Rasmussen a vicious letter accusing them of every kind of bias in their methodology and informing them they are now being dropped from 538’s aggregation.
538 also injected ABC News’ own polling into their aggregation which immediately biased things to the left. Basically they poll the same people over and over again and they are allegedly controlled by community managers.
Elliot also introduced changes in 538 algorithms. These adjusted downward outliers that did not agree with the bulk of the polling industry, who are now mostly controlled by media mega-corps like Disney.
When Kamala Harris entered the race, polls claimed that she had a commanding lead over Trump despite a series of unforced errors, an ass-clown of a Veep, and a bunker strategy that Adolph Hitler would have thought was a bit much. Why it was almost as if 538’s overlords were trying to create a narrative of momentum that would propel Kamala Harris into the White House.
The only two major pollsters criticizing the new methodology at 538 were the head of Rasmussen and Nate Silver himself.
But at the end of the day, only one poll counts in an election. And it looks like once again a well-oiled machine that got bought up by Disney had sand thrown in its gears by rigid ideologues.
