There was good reason to think the Republicans would do well in the 2022 midterms based on the historical precedents. The out party gains, the economy was shit, the president was unpopular yadd, yadda, yadda. But something else went on in 2022 that should make the media take a long hard look at how they cover campaigns and polling. The NY Times did a deep dive into what happened and it is clear that the Republican polling outfits played a media that was far to eager to buy what they were selling. They love to see the Democrats give a good spanking by Republicans. In fact, it’s their favorite thing, even if some of them are Democrats themselves. An excerpt: In the election’s immediate aftermath, the polling failures appeared to be in keeping with misfires in 2016 and 2020, when the strength of Donald J. Trump’s support was widely underestimated, and with the continuing struggles of an industry that arose with the corded home telephone to adapt to the mass migration to cellphones and text messaging. Indeed, some of the same Republican-leaning pollsters who erred in 2022 had built credibility with their contrarian, but accurate, polling triumphs in recent elections. But a New York Times review of the forces driving the narrative of a coming red wave, and of that narrative’s impact, found new factors at play. Traditional nonpartisan pollsters, after years of trial and error and tweaking of their methodologies, produced polls that largely reflected reality. But they also conducted fewer…