Fake polling from mysterious company highlights danger of unvetted election surveys
NEW YORK (AP) — Locked in a competitive reelection race, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass declared on social media last week that a new poll was evidence that her campaign…
In a highly competitive reelection campaign, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass announced on social media that a recently released poll supported her candidacy, claiming it demonstrated her campaign's growing popularity. However, it soon became apparent that the poll was fabricated. The California results were just one of several "polls" posted online this month by a previously unknown company called Median Strategies.
The organization admitted to the Los Angeles Times that the purported poll results were fabricated as part of a social experiment to examine how misleading polling information could spread through the political information ecosystem without independent verification.
Median Strategies closed its website this week, leaving no explanation of the motives behind the experiment. The trajectory of the California poll serves as a warning about the risks of trusting unvetted polling data. While high-quality independent polls still exist, they are often overshadowed by other surveys produced by campaigns, outside groups, or super PACs, or using undisclosed or questionable methodologies.
Making sense of these findings can be challenging, and as the latest episode demonstrates, campaigns can easily fall for falsified data.
Chris Wilson, a veteran Republican pollster who now leads the public opinion firm EyesOver, stated that this situation is far more serious than just one fake poll. "It's never been easier to create convincing numbers, and campaigns and outside groups have every incentive to spread favorable information before it can be verified." The Median Strategies fake polls, none of which were covered by AP, claimed to gauge support for Democratic gubernatorial candidates in Wisconsin, Nevada, and the Los Angeles mayor's race.
Written by urgent.news from Associated Press's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
