Do you believe in The "Flooding the Zone " Theory ?

[Averroës]

Plausible correlation, far-fetched theory.

[Mr.Bakari-Sellers]

Yes they don't have RFK to steal votes away from BIDEN, so they flood the zone with other polls showing Trump up narrowly over Harris which are contradicted by more main stream media polls.

Some users thought Biden was being landslided, RFK was just taking votes away, Biden was only down the same amount as Trump is now 5%

Why do you think I have MT as Lean D, Tester said don't trust MT polls in email. The same Siena poll that had Sheehy up 8% had Harris down 5% in AZ and she is leading in some polls in AZ

[Landslide Lyndon]

I’m not really into conspiracy nonsense.

Dude, you support Trump.

[tagimaucia]

The polls were considered historically accurate in 2022 and RCP’s national GCB was within 0.3% of the actual result. So if there is “flooding of the zone” as bloomers allege, it probably is only helping mitigate errors that haven’t been corrected.

Kind of a red herring, as the "flooding the zone" allegations were never about the generic ballot, but high-profile senate races.  

Just look at the 538 poll average graphs for the Pennsylvania, Arizona, and New Hampshire senate races and what happens in the last few weeks, and tell me it wasn't a thing in those particular races.

[Landslide Lyndon]

I don't know how you can argue against it at this point

https://twitter.com/admcrlsn/status/1844767513722126559

It's even worse than that because Carlson forgot to include another R-sponsored poll (so they are 27) while the D-sponsored poll is from Jacobin which is actually very hostile to the Democratic party.

[The '90s' Last Champion]

I remember when the talking point in 2020 was RCP was rigging their averages and then they ended up closer to the final result than 538.

[Darthpi - Crush the Oligarchy]

I mean it definitely happened in 2022 in the Senate and gubernatorial races.

[Ferguson97]

I remember when the talking point in 2020 was RCP was rigging their averages and then they ended up closer to the final result than 538.

538 sucking and RCP cooking the books are not mutually exclusive, to be fair.

[Landslide Lyndon]

I remember when the talking point in 2020 was RCP was rigging their averages and then they ended up closer to the final result than 538.

Research2000 was also a respected polling company but that didn't change the fact that they cooked their books. Being lucky a couple of times doesn't make you any less of a charlatan.

[Spectator]

Obviously. And if Trump ends up winning by the skin of his teeth, idiots will treat them as gospel and have egg on their face come 2025/2026/2028. Get ready for Virginia Governor to be highly dramatized for no reason only for Spanberger to predictably win by double digits.

[Comrade Funk]

Today officially jumped the shark. Nothing but Trafalgars, co/efficients, Rasmussen, Patriot Polling. It's clear what they're doing now.

[Roll Roons]

If "flooding the zone" is real, then maybe the actual good pollsters should, you know, do more polls so it doesn't leave a void that gets filled by Trafalgar, Rasmussen, etc.

[soundchaser]

If "flooding the zone" is real, then maybe the actual good pollsters should, you know, do more polls so it doesn't leave a void that gets filled by Trafalgar, Rasmussen, etc.

This exact argument was made in 2022. It wasn’t any truer then.

[EJ24]

In 2022 the GOP thought Maggie Hassan and Patty Murray might lose and don't let them tell you otherwise. Both races were blowout Dem victories.

[Migrant Crime]

In 2022 the GOP thought Maggie Hassan and Patty Murray might lose and don't let them tell you otherwise. Both races were blowout Dem victories.

We know.  And in 2020  Democrats thought Susan Collins, Thom tillis, and Joni Ernst were losing.  You can go in circles with this argument every single year.  Its getting so tiresome to read the exact same whining posts on here day after day.

There are no good pollsters.  I know you all need something to talk about every day but thats the truth.

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

If "flooding the zone" is real, then maybe the actual good pollsters should, you know, do more polls so it doesn't leave a void that gets filled by Trafalgar, Rasmussen, etc.

Good polls are far more expensive than you think(hiring call center workers at the scale required is expensive) , the NYT spent an unprecedented sum in 2018 and 2020 but they've since massively cut their polling budget and other orgs have followed.

[Existing in the context]

In 2022 the GOP thought Maggie Hassan and Patty Murray might lose and don't let them tell you otherwise. Both races were blowout Dem victories.

That whole competitive race in Washington was manafactured by Republican polling firms taking advantage of the lack of polling in the state.

[Migrant Crime]

If "flooding the zone" is real, then maybe the actual good pollsters should, you know, do more polls so it doesn't leave a void that gets filled by Trafalgar, Rasmussen, etc.

Good polls are far more expensive than you think(hiring call center workers at the scale required is expensive) , the NYT spent an unprecedented sum in 2018 and 2020 but they've since massively cut their polling budget and other orgs have followed.

The NYT polls were horrible in 2020.  That's not good.

[Pericles]

It is harder and more expensive to do a 'quality' poll than it used to be. So I'd say this is happening for financial reasons, not political ones.

[インターネット掲示板ユーザー Punxsutawney Phil]

Yes

[emailking]

Not really.

[MRS DONNA SHALALA]

I don’t think it’s a coordinated effort, I think the right are generally more susceptible to grift and the vultures are swooping in.

That said, I do believe polling is fundamentally broken as a predictive tool and we’re due for a series of big polling misses in November.

[Yoda]

The polls were considered historically accurate in 2022 and RCP’s national GCB was within 0.3% of the actual result. So if there is “flooding of the zone” as bloomers allege, it probably is only helping mitigate errors that haven’t been corrected.

RCP had Republicans picking up 5 Senate seats for a 54-46 majority in '22 days before Election Day.

https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=527811.0

[Northwesterner]

It isn't a theory, it's an observable phenomenon.

I assume that the motivation behind it is to generate a sense of momentum behind the Republican Party while demoralising the Democratic base so they don't bother to turn out. A darker interpretation is that in some cases it may also be part of an attempt to enable election denial and 'stop the steal' narratives after polling day.

Whether it is effective is another matter - I'm not sure to what extent how people vote is influenced by polls. There may be an indirect link in that the polling can influence the media coverage of the race.

However, it can also backfire by ringing the alarm bell and motivating Democrats to turn out. When the polls are shown to be wrong, it also discredits not just the companies concerned but the entire polling industry.

[afleitch]

For reference here's the 2022 results v the final 538 polling average for swing states

Where the margin is positive, that means the party outperformed the polls, where negative, they underperformed the polls.

Arizona - D+2.4 R-0.9
Georgia - D+3.1 R+1.1
Michigan - D+4.6 R-1.2
Pennsylvania - D+4.7 R-0.2
Wisconsin - D+3.1 R-0.6
Nevada - D+2.9 R+0.7
North Carolina - D+2.1 R+1

'Rust Belt' error - D+4 R-0.5
'Sun Belt' error - D+2.7 R+0.4

The average polling error for all Republican candidates across these Senatorial and Gubernatorial races was 0.0. Bang on. The average polling error for Democratic candidates was an underestimation by 3.2.

The error was larger in the 'rust belt' states.

There has been a very strange 'memory-holing' of how badly swing state polling performed in 2022 and how many races would have been called wrong based on a weighted as well as an unweighted average.

Now a mid-term is a mid-term. But in a lower turnout election, with low propensity voters they managed to find the right number of Republican voters, but not Democratic voters.

If there's any truth to this theory, then this is the sort of outcome that could be repeated in the chase to 'find' either for the sake of honesty or for the sake of partisanship, low propensity Trump voters.