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So, granted the liberal/left leaning narrative that the recent wave of election integrity laws is true(which I have my doubts about), should we expect to see republicans outperform their polls in states with those laws but not necessarily states absent them?
Or to put it another way, if the real purpose of election integrity is to benefit republicans, then we should expect a pattern of polling errors benefitting republicans in states where voter ID laws already exist, particularly the recent stricter wave. And that furthermore those polling errors should be larger than the ones in place in states lacking the recent wave of election integrity laws. So it follows that if, as in the last election, we see polls as broadly accurate in the sun belt and biased in favor of democrats in the frost belt, that would constitute evidence against election integrity laws tilting the playing field, would it not?
Polling seems as much a marketing and campaigning gimmick as it does any kind of actual fact-finding. Your question depends on how much you believe pollsters are actually concerned with facts versus marketing/campaigning. I admit I have almost nothing to add on that score, beyond the observations that Democrats are oversampled and that they always miraculously poll better in the closing months of an election cycle. But your question highlights something I think important more generally that I've been wanting to comment on.
One problem with all of the discourse around "election integrity" and "voter suppression" and "Red mirages" from the left is it presupposes that there is no cheating. While it may be expected that in-group analysis would begin with such an assumption, an objective or out-group analysis would not. In fact, the more parsimonious explanation for why there are "Red mirages" or late-count Blue resurgences might be systematic electoral fraud -- that question must remain open until investigation is completed and the hypothesis properly explored.
Similarly, when trying to interpret the consequences of "Election integrity" laws, a result that shifted favorably towards Republicans is explained by both the "voter suppression" and "electoral fraud" narratives. This is why full-scale, forensic audits coupled with comprehensive investigations of elections are actually necessary. If the voter suppression narrative were true, such audits and investigations would give a solid accounting of it. Ditto for electoral fraud. Given this, it's very, very suggestive that audits and investigations are unilaterally opposed. As for polling, I think that there is enough of a "black box" phenomenon at work there, where everything is private and proprietary, so that they could engineer their efforts towards their actual goals regardless of the truth about "election integrity" -- that is, they might become more accurate, as you suggest, but they also may persist as inaccurate or false/misleading regardless; the two things seem quite untethered.
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