A so-called polling operation that projected comfortable leads for two Democrat candidates has now confessed the entire thing was fabricated, calling it a “short-term social experiment” designed to see how easily fake data could spread through American political media.
Median Strategies, the firm behind the phony surveys, quietly admitted on its website that “all previously published polling releases have been withdrawn and should not be cited or treated as genuine polling data.” The confession comes after outlets reported on their polls as if they were legitimate, potentially influencing voter perceptions in key races.
The fake polls conveniently showed Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass with a 12-point lead over challenger Nithya Raman ahead of the city’s mayoral runoff. Another fabricated survey claimed Wisconsin Democrat socialist gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong held a commanding 23-point advantage over David Crowley in their primary race.
Hong ultimately lost to Crowley by less than a single point, exposing just how wildly inaccurate the fake data was.
“Median Strategies was created as a short-term social experiment examining how purported polling information could enter and spread through the political information ecosystem without independent verification,” the firm stated. The group refused to identify who was behind the operation, telling the Los Angeles Times they are “not seeking publicity or attribution for the individuals involved and are declining interviews.”
The Bass poll claimed to have surveyed 560 Los Angeles voters between July 30 and Aug. 5, complete with a stated 4.1 percent margin of error. The fabricated results even included details about Republican candidate Spencer Pratt, claiming 16 percent of respondents voted for him in the primary. Of those supposed Pratt voters, 85 percent were allegedly planning to support Bass in the general election, with only seven percent backing Raman.
All of it was made up.
In a post on X, Median Strategies acknowledged they “got Wisconsin wrong, and by quite a margin, too.” The admission of being off by more than 20 points would be career-ending for any legitimate polling outfit. But for a fake firm running a “social experiment,” it was apparently just part of the research.
The revelation raises serious questions about how media outlets vet polling data before publishing it as news. The Los Angeles Times reported that the firm only admitted the deception “in response to repeated inquiries” from their reporters. How many other outlets ran the fake numbers without asking basic questions about the firm’s credibility or methodology?
For American voters already skeptical of media polling after years of election predictions that missed the mark, this episode confirms their worst suspicions. Polling data that favored Democrat candidates was apparently invented out of thin air, dressed up with professional-sounding methodology, and fed into the news cycle where it could shape public perception.
