Newsmax wasn’t only pushing its favorite right-wing pollsters in the runup to the midterm elections — it was also pushing the narrative that non-right-wing polls are skewed toward Democrats. John Gizzi wrote in an Oct. 20 article:
In the past week, polling data has increasingly shown Republicans within striking distance of Democrats in races previously thought to be “safe” Democrat: the races for governor of Michigan and New York, the Senate races in Colorado and Pennsylvania, and several others.
But a careful examination of most of the major polls found that, in the past three election cycles, their results have favored the Democrats by four to five percentage points only to have the outcome either be much closer or a statistical tie.
“What we have is polling in aggregated battleground states that has continued in cycle after cycle that is inaccurate,” political analyst Spencer Abraham Jr. told Newsmax over the weekend. “And if it is inaccurate, someone needs to prove it.”
Abraham is a onetime aide to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and namesake son of a former Michigan senator and U.S. secretary of energy. He and veteran pollster Colin Pitts recently launched a new website to study major polls and their results in 2016, 2018 and 2020.
Based on their findings as detailed at The Polling Monitor, Abraham and Pitts concluded that major contests still deemed “leaning Democratic” by the polls are probably, in fact, leading the other way.
Gizzi also gave some examples of Abraham’s alleged poll analysis:
He went on to cite The Polling Monitor’s findings from the past three cycles in Arizona showing CBS/YouGov overweighing Democratic strength by 4.2%.
“So when you look at their latest poll of the Senate race showing [Democratic Sen.] Mark Kelly beating [Republican opponent] Blake Masters by 51[%] to 48%,” said Abraham, “it actually means Masters is ahead.”
In reality, Kelly defeated Masters by about 5 percentage points. Gizz also wrote:
CBS/YouGov also found on Oct. 6 that in Michigan, Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer led Republican challenger Tudor Dixon by 53% to 47%.
“But the record since 2016 shows they are outweighing the Democrats by 2.6%, so it’s probably a tie,” Abraham told us, adding that CBS/YouGov’s findings were released before the recent televised confrontation between the two in which Dixon was widely judged to have gained major ground.
In reality, Whitmer defeated Dixon by 11 percentage points. Still ,Gizzi concluded:
“If polls are misleading voters or someone has put their thumb on the scale, they need to be called out,” Abraham said. “That’s why we have PollingMonitor.com.”
So far, we haven’t seen Gizzi call out Abraham for his inaccurate analysis. Instead, he promoted more polls that turned out to be wrong. An Oct. 27 article hyped a poll by right-wing Americano Media claiming, in Gizzi’s words, “a modern high of Hispanic voters supporting Republicans,” which “could easily tip the three competitive U.S. House races in Texas to the Republicans.” In fact, Republicans won only one of the three Texas seats Gizzi referenced.
A Nov. 5 article by Gizzi touted how in the Wisconsin governor race, “the much-respected Marquette University Law School poll shows among voters statewide, [incumbent Democratic Gov. Tony] Evers and GOP businessman Tim Michels are deadlocked with 48% each,” which “clearly shows movement in the direction of Trumpster Michaels since a month ago.” Evers won by three percentage points.
Gizzi hasn’t been eager to revisit this inaccurate polling either.