A Fake Pollster Likely Invented the Red Wave

A dumb person's idea of what a smart person looks like:

What’s going on here? Well, Trafalgar founder Robert Cahaly is a longtime Republican operative (one who, as you can see from the TV screenshot above, lends himself an air of intellectual authority by wearing a bow tie). Many Republicans believe that independent polling operations are among the mainstream institutions biased against conservatives. During the 2012 presidential election, that feeling gave rise to a concept called “unskewing the polls,” which were said to be understating support for Mitt Romney.

They weren’t—Romney lost, and most polls actually overestimated his support—but during the next presidential cycle, Cahaly’s operation began putting out its first polls, which consistently suggested Donald Trump had a very good chance of defeating Hillary Clinton. Most other polls did not say this, and when Trump won, Cahaly became a polling celebrity. 

In 2020, Trafalgar’s polls said the same thing—that Trump was going to win. Of course, Trump did not win, but Tralfagar retained much of its influence, including among mainstream reporters. This was partly because Nate Silver’s site FiveThirtyEight continued to give the group an A-minus rating for its overall accuracy despite some concerns about its transparency. (Many other polls in 2020 were off in the other direction, i.e., overestimating support for Joe Biden.) Cahaly’s outlier optimism about Republican chances continued unabated this cycle, and was arguably instrumental in creating the narrative of a rising red wave that never materialized. (Presumably, that A-minus is about to drop).