Just like 2022, GOPs giving discouraging polls. Dems outperformed then, why would it change now?

I admit to being someone who updates 538 and related poll prediction sites more than I should. What can I say, I'm into numbers and it's hard to look away. And I know better, because as Dem strategist Simon Rosenberg constantly reminds us, these predictions are being gamed by dishonest GOP organizations.

Part of their new efforts to drive the natl polling average down is addition of a TIPP daily tracking poll. Predictably, and perhaps comically, it showed the race - all of a sudden! - breaking to Trump after 6 weeks of a remarkably stable race and a bad media week for Trump 2/

— Simon Rosenberg (@SimonWDC) October 21, 2024

To be clear - the independent polls last week were +3 to +5 Harris. A steady, stable race. Then boom - red wavers dropped series of polls 2 to 5 points to the right of indep. polling and the averages moved.

This is exactly what they did in 2022. 7/https://t.co/K3uPFIAzAy

— Simon Rosenberg (@SimonWDC) October 21, 2024

And our state is part of this effort. So let’s give a look to what the final result was in these races in 2022, and just how well the pollsters (in the aggregate) got it in these swing states.

Here's what the polls had for Wisconsin's governor's election in 2022.

The Wisconsin Gov Result? Evers +3.4%.

Same thing showed up in the Senate race, which had Ron Johnson up a lot over Mandela Barnes.

The Wisconsin Senate Result? Johnson +1.0%. Think some people might have voted differently if they knew Mandela Barnes had a much better chance of winning than the polls led on?

A similar pattern shows up for 2022 in almost all of the 7 states that are listed as the closest in the nation in this presidential race. For example, here is Michigan's polling in their Governor's race, which indicated a close one.

Final score? Whitmer +10.6%, and Dems took control of both houses of the Michigan Legislature.

If you trusted what polls were telling you, you'd have thought Kari Lake was on her way to a decent-sized win for 2022's election for Governor of Arizona.

FINAL SCORE - Hobbs +0.6%.

But the bigger agenda-setting by GOP fraud pollsters was in US Senate races, where Republicans would gain control with a couple of victories in swing seat races. They even tried to show that ridiculous tech bro Blake Masters had momentum against Mark Kelly in Arizona's Senate race in 2022.

Actual result? Kelly +4.9%.

Another weirdo GOP that TrumpWorld tried to push into the Senate in 2022 was TV huckster Mehmet Oz, who tried to hold onto a Senate seat against Dem John Fetterman. And the GOP pollsters really tried to convince people that Fetterman was fading in the last month of the campaign after suffering a strike.

The result at the ballot box? Fetterman +4.9%.

In Georgia, another Trump-picked weirdo was on the GOP side, in former NFL trade target Herschel Walker. He was trying to boot out incumbent Senator Rafael Warnock, and polls said Walker had a good chance of getting the job done.

The November result? Warnock +0.9%, although neither candidate got a majority, and Warnock had to win a runoff election a month later.

In North Carolina, pollsters had indicated Ted Budd had broken away in a close Senate race, which would have sent a message to Dems not to go hard after this seat.

Final result? Budd +3.2%. A lot closer than the polls were telling the public.

Lastly, GOP pollsters also tried to make it look like GOPs were going to defeat Catherine Cortez-Masto and flip one of Nevada's 2 Senate seats.

Result? Cortez-Masto +0.9%. And even when GOPs won another close race in Nevada, with Joe Lombardo in unseating Governor Steve Sisolak by 1.4%, it wasn't by as much as the pollsters indicated. Especially the GOP-sponsored ones.

Lot of pro-GOP misses in there, and not by a little. But that's by design. A central Trump/GOP strategy is to try to project an image of strength and inevitability, and trick casual and low-info voters into backing Trump and other GOP "winners". Making up polls that lean GOP is also a way to try to encourage lazy journalists into giving a theme of "Trump winning/Trump has momentum" that can misdirect from that dimwit's significant flaws and the fact that GOP positions are out of step with the mainstream.

But in 2022, these fake polls didn't change the reality that Dems were leading, and they were the choice of the public in almost all of these contested swing state races. Here in Wisconsin, we've also seen Dems have convincing wins in both the April 2023 Supreme Court race, and the August 2024 referendum. Dems have also generally done well in elections of all sorts in swing states since the Dobbs decision came down.

So why would we think that 2024 would be any different, and that Democrat Kamala Harris shouldn't be favored in most if not all of those states? Especially when the economy is better than in 2022, Trump is noticeably more feeble and desperate than he was in previous elections, and the Harris-Walz campaign looks confident and is trying to expand their base instead of be in fear of losing what they have?

It's not guaranteed by any means, and we need to keep working at it for these next 2 weeks. But what makes us think that in the Real America, Dems shouldn't be favored, no matter what slanted polls might be saying?