For the first time since 538 published our presidential election forecast for Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, Trump has taken the lead (if a very small one) over Harris. As of 3 p.m. Eastern on Oct. 18, our model gives Trump a 52-in-100 chance of winning the majority of Electoral College votes. The model gives Harris a 48-in-100 chance.
Well yeah, but that’s assuming their pollster quality metric is actually good. Without knowing the result, who’s to say that previously reputable pollsters weren’t “bought” this cycle. With the billionaire interest and dark money floating around, why not?
Polls are shit, go vote!
This is getting into some pretty nonsense conspiracy level.
Given that high quality pollsters like Emerson, Sienna, the Times are all showing similar movements in their polls, your theory about buying out reputable pollsters requires most pollsters to simultaneously burn their reputations, be open to corruption etc allegations and presumably suffer criminal penalties as most of their polls are technically done for a client. And none of whom are instead exposing the very offer as a huge media boost? And for what? So the polls look marginally better for trump?
This kind of wishful thinking reminds me of listening to stolen election nonsense, where yeah, you can make believe a conspiracy where the Dems bought off a bunch of judges, election officials, forensic analysts etc but it beggars belief.