Retiring Guy's Digest: FiveThirtyEight evaluates the 2022 polling season and downgrades Trafalgar to a 'B' grade for its historically inaccurate and purposefully misleading polls

Headline: New York Magazine, 10/14/2022

Top headline: FiveThirtyEight, 3/19/2023

Bottom headline: Slate, 11/10/2022

From FiveThirtyEight:

Meanwhile, the bottom of the list features quite a few Republican-affiliated pollsters that systematically overestimated the GOP in 2022: RRH Elections, InsiderAdvantage, co/efficient, Moore Information Group.14 But the most famous of these is probably Trafalgar Group, a pollster whose methods are notoriously opaque but that played a significant role in shaping the ultimately untrue narrative that a “red wave” was building with its 37 (!) qualifying pre-election polls. Trafalgar’s polls were quite accurate in 2020, when its Republican-leaning house effects helped it avoid the big polling miss that other firms experienced. As a result, it went into 2022 with an A- pollster rating. But its poor performance last cycle has knocked it down to a B — making it one of two pollsters to fall two notches in our ratings this year.

And they're still at it! (And here.)

More from Trafalgar's polling fantasyland:

February 2023

Trafalgar leaves deep and lasting stain on polling profession with off-the-charts dreadful performance in 2022 midterms. (2/17)

January 2023

RULE #1: Never take a Trafalgar poll at face valve (RNC chair election edition). (1/27)

RULE #1: Never take a Trafalgar poll at face valve (Border security edition). (1/27)

RULE #1: Never take a Trafalgar poll at face value (RNC edition). (1/26)

Day 61 of Robert C. Cahaly's self-imposed exile. (1/7)

FiveThirtyEight reports Trafalgar poll with a straight face. (1/6)

December 2022

In a year when conservative pollsters tried to drive the election narrative, Politico sez "HOORAY " for polls. (12/31)
Rule #1: Never cite a Trafalgar poll to bolster your argument. (12/24)