Simon Rosenberg (Hopium Chronicles Substack) continues to rail against gamed polling averages in state-level polling:
A general reminder that there remains an awful lot of right-aligned polling in the polling averages, and folks should continue to be skeptical, given what happened in 2022, of any right-leaning poll or pollster. It’s why I am not a big fan of polling averages. They were gamed by a flood of right-wing polls in 2022, and there remains a lot of those pollsters in the averages today …
No state has seen more “red wave pollsters” in recent weeks than North Carolina. The majority of the recent, public, independent polls taken there show Harris tied or ahead. There have now been 7 - yes 7 - right wing aligned polls that have polled there in recent weeks and of course ALL OF THEM show Trump ahead. The polling average in North Carolina would favor Harris if we removed the flood of these right wing, narrative shaping polls … The game here obviously is to not let it appear that Mark Robinson’s meltdown is causing NC to slip away.
It appears that their goal right now is to create two basic narratives about the election - MT and OH (in the Senate - b) are slipping away from Dems and NC and PA are in play (in the presidential election - b) and Trump still has a shot at 270 (for if those states go he has no path). After NC, PA has seen the second most number of these red wave polls in recent weeks.