RealClearPolitics is invaluable to those of us who follow politics. Every reporter, political science professor, and political junkie checks the site every day to see what is happening in the world of politics and as importantly, what others are saying about it.

It is also one of the few sites without a clear partisan bent, although some think it leans a bit to the right. But that is mainly because it is one of the few places where you can find links to what conservatives are saying, instead of only liberal leaning content. As a conservative I can tell you that I find plenty of Leftist nonsense linked there as well.

One of RCP’s premier features is their coverage of polling, and the now-famous and oft-used RCP polling average. They have provided this service since they were formed 20 years ago, and it has become so ubiquitous that news stories regularly cite it, even when discussing a particular poll. The polling average aggregates all the polls out there covering a particular issue and gives you a basic average of what they are saying. It is sort of a poll of the polls.

Of course taking the average of polls is hardly a guarantee of quality, but it does smooth out the results somewhat and gives you a decent sense of trends. But as with all things the quality of the output is determined by the quality of the inputs, and the quality of polling has been abysmal of late.

So RealClearPolitics is trying to address the issue. They have announced a “Polling Accountability Initiative.” 

As a leader in political polling and election coverage for two decades, RealClearPolitics is announcing an initiative to improve public trust and confidence in political polling.

Since pioneering the RCP Poll Average in 2002, the public opinion survey industry has undergone momentous changes and faced a series of challenges in a profoundly altered political landscape.  Twenty years ago, Facebook and Twitter did not exist. The iPhone did not exist. The percentage of households with landlines has dropped from 90% in 2004 to just 40% today. Over the same period, the number of Americans owning cell phones has skyrocketed to 97%.

There have been many news stories over the last several months questioning whether polling is broken in the United States. While there are certainly challenges in the polling industry, it is not entirely accurate to suggest polling is broken. There are many quality pollsters and media outlets that are doing excellent work in a constantly changing technological and political environment. However, there are also pollsters and news organizations that are doing less-than-stellar work and, unfortunately, many of the polls from these organizations receive a disproportionate amount of attention.

To help address this problem, in the coming weeks RealClearPolitics will be rolling out a beta version ranking polling organizations. RCP will rank pollsters by their performance in recent elections, and will of course evaluate their performance in the 2022 mid-term election in just under a month. RCP’s goal here is simple. Accuracy is the foundational bedrock of public trust. To that end we will be evaluating pollsters almost exclusively on one metric – accuracy in reflecting the actual results.

They don’t outright say it, but the thrust of the initiative is clear: to name and shame the “pollsters and news organizations” who are skewing the results and getting disproportionate attention for misleading results. They aren’t naming names yet, but they are promising to do so.

Many of us on the right have been struck by how misleading the polling is in important races–always skewing in favor of the Democrats. Remember when Hillary had a 99% chance of winning the presidency just before she lost?

RCP hopes to improve the reporting. Chances are that this will benefit Republicans, not because that is RCP’s intended goal, but rather because reality in this case favors our cause.