With less than three weeks to go, electoral anxiety is reaching a fever pitch. The political media’s narrative is that the race has shifted and Donald Trump grew stronger over the last few weeks. There is little evidence to support that assessment. As I wrote last week (in case anyone missed it):

With three weeks to go, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are in a dead-heat race nationally and in all seven battleground states. That’s where the race was before the Democratic convention, after the second debate, and after the second assassination attempt on Trump. For an election beset by a series of unprecedented events, the Harris-Trump race remains remarkably steady.

This race is so close that all of the movement is within the margin of error, and therefore, we cannot separate actual movement from statistical noise. Nonetheless, everyone is looking for reasons to explain why the race feels so close. One popular explanation within a cadre of Democratic activists and liberal writers is that the Republicans are flooding the zone with junk polls to skew the polling averages and make it look like Trump is winning — or at least gaining ground.

These theories come up during every Message Box subscriber chat. It’s a popular topic for Pod Save America listeners. Someone raised it with me at the grocery store last week.

I talked about this in the most recent episode of Pollercoaster — my podcast for Crooked Media subscribers — but I want to go deeper for Message Box subscribers. The story is more complicated than people assume and the “GOP junk polls” narrative is becoming a bit of a distraction.

So, here’s the deal.

1. Are Republican Pollsters Flooding the Zone?

Yes. Absolutely. I have push notifications set up for all of the polling aggregator accounts, and my phone is constantly lighting up with alerts about new polls from outfits like Trafalgar, OnMessage, Patriot Polling, and American Greatness.

Simon Rosenberg of the Hopium Chronicles has been tracking this trend since 2022. On October 5th, he wrote:

The red wavers stepped up their activity this past week, releasing at least 20 polls across the battlegrounds. It’s a sign that they are worried about the public polling in both the Presidential and the Senate, and have dramatically escalated their efforts to push the polling averages to the right and make the election look redder than it is.

These polls are, of course, consistently a few points more favorable to Trump — particularly in the battleground states. That drumbeat continued over the last couple of weeks. Those claiming the GOP is dumping out a bunch of partisan polls are not imagining things...