Candidate Quality Skews Poll–Fundamentals Gap

When parties nominate unusually strong or weak candidates, state and national polls can depart systematically from historical fundamentals (economy, partisanship, incumbency). Forecasters and the public should treat deviations as potentially real signals tied to candidate quality — not just polling error. — Recognizing candidate quality as a structural modifier matters for forecasts, media narratives, campaign strategy, and voter expectations about which races are truly competitive.