I thought I shared this before. Why the Right Thinks Trump Is Running Away With the Race
Skewed polls and anonymous betting markets are building up Republicans’ expectations. Donald Trump could use that to challenge the result.

This should be readable by all - it's an article shared from my subscription. This is the start of it:

The torrent of polls began arriving just a few weeks ago, one after the other, most showing a victory for Donald J. Trump.

They stood out amid the hundreds of others indicating a dead heat in the presidential election. But they had something in common: They were commissioned by right-leaning groups with a vested interest in promoting Republican strength.

These surveys have had marginal, if any, impact on polling averages, which either do not include the partisan polls or give them little weight. Yet some argue that the real purpose of partisan polls, along with other expectation-setting metrics such as political betting markets, is directed at a different goal entirely: building a narrative of unstoppable momentum for Mr. Trump.

The partisan polls appear focused on lifting Republican enthusiasm before the election and — perhaps more important — cementing the idea that the only way Mr. Trump can lose to Vice President Kamala Harris is if the election is rigged. Polls promising a Republican victory, the theory runs, could be held up as evidence of cheating if that victory does not come to pass.

“Republicans are clearly strategically putting polling into the information environment to try to create perceptions that Trump is stronger,” said Joshua Dyck, who directs the Center for Public Opinion at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell. “Their incentive is not necessarily to get the answer right.” [emphasis mine]

Last week, the right-wing influencer Ian Miles Cheong shared a survey with his 1.1 million followers on X. The forecast from a new polling company suggested, without sharing its methodology, that the former president would take 74.3 percent of the national vote — a landslide unprecedented in American history.

“Trump is absolutely going to win,” Mr. Cheong wrote. “The data shows it.”

In the final stretch of the campaign in 2020, Republican-aligned pollsters released 15 presidential election polls of swing states. In the same period this year, they have released 37, according to a New York Times analysis of data from the polling aggregator FiveThirtyEight. Of those 37, all but seven had Mr. Trump in the lead.

That increase comes as the volume of nonpartisan polls — such as those commissioned by major news organizations — have dropped significantly, though they still make up a majority of the polls released. Of the nonpartisan surveys released in the final weeks of this year’s campaign, roughly half showed a lead for Mr. Trump.

And that is counting only polls that are explicitly designated as politically aligned by FiveThirtyEight, which sets a high bar for defining partisan polls. There have been additional polls conducted by firms with a history of favoring Republicans or with a public record of pro-Republican rhetoric that have not been designated as partisan by any of the aggregators.

Other factors have also fueled the perception of Mr. Trump’s strength. Betting platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi that allow people to place bets on election outcomes have seen a spike in Mr. Trump’s favor over the past month — one that does not track with the overall state of the race as captured by reputable polling firms.

That surge appears to have been pushed almost entirely by a very small number of high-value bets from just four accounts linked to a French national. Those accounts have collectively placed $30 million on a Trump victory this month. [emphasis mine]

Mr. Trump and his allies, including Elon Musk, have nonetheless promoted the betting markets — although they are opaque, largely unregulated and not a scientific way to gauge public polls. Mr. Trump cited Polymarket in a recent speech, saying, “I don’t know what the hell it means, but it means we’re doing pretty well.”

A spokesperson for Polymarket declined to provide comment for this article.

Dick can ignore the bets. They're rigged.