Who do you think will be proven correct next week? The R-leaning pollsters, like Trafalgar, Big Data, InsiderAdvantage, etc., or the "mainstream" pollsters such as NYT/Siena, Civiqs, Selzer, and the like? Most left-leaning posters seem to believe that the latter will.
The former, but they are obviously not a monolith, nor will all of their polls turn out to be accurate (Trafalgar in particular will have some misses in deep blue states). Also, just because "traditional" methods of polling by supposedly reputable polling organizations are problematic in their own ways doesn’t mean that all innovative methods are going to be sound. However, as long as "mainstream" pollsters keep missing and those misses happen to consistently favor one side, there is no reason why we should trust them more than pollsters like Emerson or InsiderAdvantage or pay particular attention to them as opposed to the latter. The left loves to operate by conferring prestige/authority on anything and anybody who concurs with their narrative while stripping anything or anybody who disagrees with it of said prestige (this is evident even on this forum), but don’t let that intimidate you — you are absolutely right that "established" or "mainstream" does not equate to "reliable" and "trustworthy" (this doesn’t just apply to polls, of course).
Even if Republicans sweep nearly all the competitive races, however, I don’t believe anything will fundamentally change, and we’ll go through this every cycle for the foreseeable future. One side is systematically overrepresented in the 'consensus' and in punditry, and it will keep discrediting the former group of pollsters while treating the latter with (unwarranted) authority because it bolsters their narrative. Polls have become a convenient way of adding a scientific veneer to one's preconceived narrative, and other indicators (fundraising, special elections, early voting, etc.) are arguably becoming (or have already become) even less predictive of actual election results than polling. I don’t think there’s an obvious fix to this problem in the short term — it’ll always be "choose your adventure," with one side (Democrats) doing well in the 'traditional' indicators/metrics and the 'established' outlets and the other side (Republicans) doing well in the 'alternative' ones. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
