[Above: From Monday's Reid Out - Simon Rosenberg of the New Democratic Network points out to Joy Reid that polls from Republican firms can't be trusted, and therefore data from "poll aggregators" like Five Thirty Eight are damaged. "In six major battleground states, more than half the polls conducted in October have been conducted by Republican firms... basically we can't trust the data on RealClearPolitics or FiveThirtyEight any longer... it's essentially Republican propaganda." ]

Guys, I know I am beating this drum A LOT, but it is one that we need to hear. So I was pleased to see this on The Bird this morning:

Averaging of polls is rather like actuarial tables in that as long as the data is good, then the average more-or-less can be seen as accurate. So this year, when 538 uses fewer polls than before AND as we see the polls that they do use are commissioned campaign polls, the averages are suspect.

As we know, finding voters willing to respond to polls is difficult especially when you have a model on who you think will actually show up. The polls from the last few election cycles were notoriously off and it seems so were the models of who would be actually voting.

Keep your eye on the early election returns via The American Election Project. These are actual numbers of people who actually have already voted. These are not models and not likely voters. I find it encouraging that in every state I am following, Women are out-performing men.

Keep up the good fight, we can make history this midterm, but all of us have to be in the game.

Republished with permission from Mock, Paper, Scissors.