As Americans are knee-deep in the 2026 midterm election primary season, the conventional wisdom surrounding the myriad polls they are treated to is that, as far as midterm elections go, most people don't start paying attention to candidate polls until after Labor Day. But what if that isn't true? And what if those polls are just not accurate? One Republican pollster decided to put the math to the test.
Our D+10 national polling stands correct as this was the result in Alaska last night where Peltola won by 5.5% https://t.co/wbKSJGGQdz
— The Public Sentiment Institute (@TPSIOfficial) August 19, 2026
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Patrick Ruffini is the co-founder of Eshelon Insights. He studied over 3,000 polls that encompassed the last four election cycles, and now he may have proof of what Republicans have long suspected. His investigation into Senate election polling revealed that a stunning 73 percent of the polls overstated support for Democrat candidates. Ruffini found that the greatest disparity with poll numbers occurs during the summer months, where there is an almost six-point edge for Democrats in late July that doesn't begin to fall until late August. Ruffini shared his findings on his Substack, writing:
In the last few election cycles, we’ve seen a pattern of Democrats looking competitive in red state Senate contests during the summer only to fade by election day. I wanted to test if this was a consistent pattern, not just the selective memory of a Republican. The average polling error across all polls was D+3.7, and 73% of polls released overstated the Democrat relative to the election result. Again, that’s across more than 3,000 polls, so that’s hardly just statistical noise.
Just a few of the election polls that Ruffini looked at were the 2020 race between the late Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Democrat Jaime Harrison. One of those polls, a Quinnipiac poll from July 30 to August 3, showed a tied race, with a CBS/YouGov poll showing Graham with just a one-point lead through September. Graham would go on to win by 10 points. In 2022, former Ohio Congressman Tim Ryan was up against now-Vice President JD Vance. Again, throughout the summer, most polling showed Ryan ahead of Vance. Vance would go on to win the election by six points. In 2024, in the race between former Sen. Sherrod Brown and now-Sen. Bernie Moreno, summer polling gave Brown an edge of anywhere from two to six points. Moreno won by almost four points.
"Polling error peaks at 5.9 points too Democratic sometime in late July, and doesn’t start coming down until late August, before settling into an average error of D+2.6 on election day."
— Alex Baltzegar (@AlexBaltzegar) August 18, 2026
Good research from @PatrickRuffini (GOP pollster). We have seen similar in NC.#ncpol https://t.co/zY3zgZQ1Vg
So, are polls favoring Democrat candidates the dirty little secret that can no longer be hidden? Polling company Median Strategies announced on Tuesday that it was getting out of the polling business after admitting to bogus polling data, calling it "a short-term social experiment." This was the same outfit whose "experiment" had failed Wisconsin Democratic Socialist gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong, a shoo-in to win her primary by 20 points. She ended up losing to her opponent, David Crowley, by less than one percent.
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Democrats will no doubt try to downplay Ruffini's results as just election-year ebbs and flows in poll numbers. And while perhaps a small number of voters might be affected, they are affected nonetheless, and Democrats know it. How many more polling companies like Median Strategies are out there? With each election cycle, Democrats are proving they will do what they feel they have to do to gain and keep power. Skewing poll numbers is just all in a day's work.
Ideally, poll numbers should not decide someone's vote. Democrats are hoping bogus poll numbers will.
"Pay attention to this and stop thinking polls are accurate" is some good advice ===> https://t.co/C9u0nq3M8a pic.twitter.com/MawipHFcl6
— Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) August 19, 2026
Editor’s Note: The 2026 Midterms will determine the fate of President Trump’s America First agenda. Republicans must maintain control of both chambers of Congress.
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