New “Poll” by Right-Wing TIPP Highlights the “Flood-the-Zone” Strategy by Trump and His Supporters; Also Calls Into Serious Question the Aggregators’ Business Model

Many Democrats are addicted to checking the FiveThirtyEight aggregator  – and to freaking out every time Kamala Harris’ (supposed) chances drop. The problem, though,  is there’s a fundamental flaw to the FiveThirtyEight aggregator – and to all aggregators, really – which is that is that there simply aren’t many legitimate, serious, high-quality polls available at this point, and to the extent there are, they risk being drowned out by a flood of “polls” (in air quotes) by outfits that are clearly right wing propaganda.

For instance, a new poll this morning by TIPP claims an implausible, wild 6-point swing in favor of Trump, nationally, in just four days. WTF, you ask? Should you be freaking out? I mean, sure, freak out if you want, but first you might want to check out TIPP Insights’ website. When you do, you’lls ee that it’s…I mean, YIKES – it’s *filled* with bats***-crazy, right-wing-propaganda articles like: “Harris Bombs Fox News Interview With Shrill, Combative Tone, Disqualifying Herself For Presidency”; “Night And Day: Trump’s Command Of Economy Exposes Harris’s Novice Approach”; “Kamala Isn’t Just Stupid, She’s Dangerous”; etc, etc. And one of their editorial board members touts his appearances on far-right-extremist shows/sites like Glenn Beck, Townhall, Dennis Prager, Michael Medved, PJ Media, etc, etc. And another member of the editorial board writes, “I believe that we may be experiencing Global Warming at this time. But, I think it is highly unlikely that the primary cause is greenhouse gases.”  So…yeah, that’s who runs “TIPP Insights,” and why obviously their “polls” should, at the minimum, be taken with an enormous grain/pillar of salt.  Finally, check out what TIPP did recently with its Pennsylvania “poll,” almost completely eliminating Philadelphia from its Likely Voter results, in order to falsely put Trump in the lead, instead of trailing (as he was, by 4 points, among Registered Voters in that same “poll). So, obviously, TIPP is about as far from non-partisan as is humanly possible. Yet they’re treated as a real poll and included in averages by aggregators like FiveThirtyEight. Hmmmm.

The problem for the polling aggregators (whether FiveThirtyEight and The Economist, both of which are operating in good faith, or RealClear Politics, which is simply right-wing propaganda and definitely should NOT be cited as a legitimate source by anyone operating in good faith), unfortunately, is that TIPP isn’t an isolated example of major problems with the polls (or “polls”) being included in their models. Recently, the super-sharp Sam Shirazi wrote an article about “Flooding the Zone,” in which “skewed polls from GOP-aligned pollster are being generated to try and shape perceptions of the election.” For instance, take Trafalgar, which “released an infamous poll in 2022 showing Democrats only leading the Vermont Senate race by 8% (they needed up winning by 40%).” And in 2022, Sam notes that “the 538 average [for the US Senate race in Pennsylvania between Democrat John Fetterman and Republican Mehmet Oz] included GOP aligned pollsters Patriot Polling (49%-46% Oz), Trafalgar (48%-46% Oz), and co/efficient (48%-45% Oz)”  – all of which were badly wrong, as Fetterman won by 5 points (51.2%-46.3%).

But wait, you say, aren’t there just as many Democratic-aligned public polls as Republican/right-wing ones?  Not even close, actually. As Sam Shirazi writes:

“Given the number of polls being released by GOP aligned pollsters this year, many Democrats believe that flooding the zone is continuing, if not accelerating. Traditional GOP aligned pollsters like Rasmussen and Trafalgar are being joined by new outfits like SoCal and Quantus. There are simply not the same number of Democratic aligned pollsters to keep up with all the polls being released from the GOP side.” 

And it’s only gotten worse over the past few years. For instance, as this tweet notes: “in the first 3 weeks of October 2020, we had 20+ quality nonpartisan statewide polls of PA. In this same period now, only half a dozen + twice as many partisan (GOP) ones. Troubling, to say the least.” Yes, it’s troubling for sure. Yet have the polling aggregators adjusted to this sufficiently (or at all, in some cases)?

Take a look at the FiveThirtyEight.com national polling average, and you’ll see a slew of right-wing/GOP polls (or “polls”) like the aforementioned TIPP, Rasmussen, Trafalger, SoCal, Quantus, plus Patriot Polling, American Pulse, co/efficient, OnMessage, etc, etc. Then there are polls that are questionable, such as RMG (run by Scott Rasmussen, who used to run the right-wing Rasmussen Reports), HarrisX (run by Mark Penn – “became a defender of Donald Trump, opposing his impeachment, consulting on his 2020 presidential campaign, and alleging a “deep state” conspiracy against him” – so definitely can’t trust him or his “polling”!), etc.

In addition to this “flooding the zone” with right-wing “polls,” the problem is that there are ALSO many low-quality polls that aren’t right wing, necessarily, but just aren’t very good. See FiveThirtyEight’s pollster ratings, which rank 282 polling outfits, and you’ll see what I’m talking about. The worst “poll” on that list is McLaughlin and Associates, a pro-Trump outfit which in October 2022 had Republicans poised for a massive “red wave” election…which obviously never happened. Then there are many polls that aren’t right-wing or Republican that simply aren’t high-quality polls, as you can see from the FiveThirtyEight pollster ratings.  The problem for the poll aggregators, like the right-wing RealClear Politics – or the non-partisan FiveThirtyEight or The Economist – is that if you don’t include all the clearly biased “polls” AND don’t include the low-quality polls, you might not/probably won’t have enough polls to update your polling averages frequently, certainly not in individual states.

For instance, in the crucial/swing state of Wisconsin, the polls included in FiveThirtyEight in October 2024 have been: The Bullfinch Group (no pollster rating), RMG Research (run by Scott Rasmussen – see above), Morning Consult (ranked #107 by FiveThirtyEight), Redfield & Wilton (ranked #118 by FiveThirtyEight), Patriot Polling (a right-wing “poll” ranked #249 by FiveThirtyEight), InsiderAdvantage (run by a Republican who founded the right-wing Trafalgar Group and a Republican former elected official who used to work for Newt Gingrich), Fabrizio, Lee & Associates/McLaughlin & Associates (the latter is run by Republicans and is ranked dead last by FiveThirtyEight; the former is run by a Republican who polled for Trump’s 2016 and 2020 campaigns), Emerson (generally considered a legitimate, high-quality, non-partisan pollster, although they were badly off in 2022 – almost all in favor of Republicans – in New Hampshire for US Senate, Michigan for governor, Arizona for US Senate, Nevada for US Senate, nationally, ), etc. Looking at these polls, how many do you consider to be: a) non-partisan, or at least not biased towards Republicans; b) high quality? Not many, right? So again, what happens if the aggregators only include high-quality polls that aren’t clearly biased towards Republicans (or Democrats, for that matter – although that’s MUCH less common these days, plus let’s not do a false equivalence, as Democrats tend to be reality-based, while MAGA Republicans…not so much).

Bottom lines: 1) When you see a “poll,” such as by TIPP this morning which showed a sudden, completely implausible, 6-point swing towards Trump nationally in just four days (there’s literally ZERO chance that actually happened!), you should immediately check into that pollster to see if they’re part of the right wing’s “flood the zone” operation, because they almost certainly are. 2) As for the polling aggregators (whether FiveThirtyEight, Nate Silver, The Economist, or whoever), it seems like their entire business model might be broken – or at the minimum, quite shaky, not that they’d ever admit that! – at this point, because if they stopped using the “flood-the-zone” right-wing “polls,” and also gave little weight to low-quality polls in general, they wouldn’t have much else left as inputs into their models (then, how could they provide frequent updates to their polling averages for individual states or nationally? there go the clicks/eyeballs! LOL).