Fake Polls Expose Election Data Vulnerabilities

NEW YORK — 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 was “gaining momentum.” Just a few days later, the truth emerged: The poll was fabricated.

The California results were among at least three fake “polls” across three states posted online this month by Median Strategies, a previously unknown organization that admitted to the Los Angeles Times on Monday that the purported results were fake. The company wrote before shuttering its website this week that it “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,” according to AP News.

A Cautionary Tale for the Digital Age

The trajectory of the California poll offers a cautionary tale about the perils of trusting unvetted polling data. While high-quality independent polls still exist, they appear amid a slew of other surveys produced by outside groups, campaigns or super PACs using undisclosed or questionable methodologies. As the latest episode shows, even major campaigns can fall for falsified data.

“This is much bigger than one fake poll,” said Chris Wilson, a veteran Republican pollster who now leads the public opinion firm EyesOver. “It’s never been easier to make invented numbers look legitimate, and campaigns and outside groups have every incentive to amplify anything favorable before anyone verifies it.”

The Los Angeles poll, which purported to show Bass leading councilmember Nithya Raman, a progressive Democrat, by approximately 12 percentage points in the mayoral runoff, was shared by the Bass campaign on social media and covered by the California Post before it was revealed to be bogus. The fake poll claimed to have surveyed 560 Los Angeles voters between July 30 and Aug. 5, with a 4.1% margin of error.

Bass shared the poll on social media on Aug. 12, posting “Doing the work, showing up, and gaining momentum. Let’s do this, LA!” The Bass campaign has since deleted its social media post promoting the poll but defended itself by saying it “was reported on by multiple news outlets.”

“Any bad faith attempts to influence elections should be investigated and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” Bass campaign spokesman Alex Stack said.

Raman’s campaign was more pointed in its criticism. “It is the latest example of an administration that too often struggles to get the basics right,” Raman campaign spokesperson Liz Garcia said. “Angelenos deserve a mayor who gets the facts right, communicates clearly, and does the work before announcing the result.”

Transparency Is Critical for Evaluating Poll Findings

Median’s “findings” were shared by polling aggregation accounts on social media. They were not, however, included in the databases of major independent aggregators, including The New York Times, Real Clear Politics or FiftyPlusOne.

The New York Times and FiftyPlusOne noted that the polls were released without basic information needed for vetting, such as who was running the firm. When they reached out, Median Strategies did not respond to requests for more information.

“When the poll was released, it lacked basic information about how it was conducted and who was behind it,” Will Davis, director of Election Data Analytics at The New York Times, wrote in an email to the AP. “Releasing this type of information is standard practice for pollsters, and because that information was not provided, we did not include it.”

Mary Radcliffe, head of research at FiftyPlusOne, also thought the methodology statement for the Wisconsin poll was missing key details, including the source for the voter file the company claimed to have used and the vendor who fielded part of the sample. Median did not respond to her questions, so the polls were not included in FiftyPlusOne’s database.

“There is a universe where they could have come up with plausible answers to my questions,” Radcliffe said. “This is an industry built on trust. I have to trust that people are answering my questions in good faith.”

While admissions of falsified polling data are rare, they are not without precedent. In 2010, the left-leaning blog Daily Kos said that polling for its website, conducted by a firm called Research 2000, was fraudulent. But it’s common for pollsters to release polls with minimal information about methodology, and many election polls are conducted by campaigns or super political action committees with a stake in the outcome. This can leave few — if any — reliable and independent polls to evaluate in contests like midterm primaries.

Prediction Markets Add a New Dimension

The introduction of prediction market platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket gives polls a different significance for people betting on election outcomes. The posts about Wisconsin and Nevada drew little reaction and were not accompanied by any discernible movement on the two prediction markets when they were released, but there were some shifts on both platforms after Bass shared the false Median Strategies numbers.

On Kalshi, the price of a “yes” contract on Bass winning the Los Angeles mayoral election rose two cents, from about 63 cents to about 65 cents, within fifteen minutes of Median’s post. On Polymarket, roughly twenty separate accounts traded thousands of contracts in Bass’s favor six minutes after the tweet.

In the days leading up to Bass’s post about Median, trading on the LA mayoral election had been thin, with a typical trade over that week being under $10. While the price movements were small, the concentration of trading on both platforms shortly after the release of Median’s fake poll was notable.

Election officials have expressed growing concern about prediction markets, according to Votebeat. Nearly $200 million in trading volume has been recorded on midterm election outcomes on prediction markets Kalshi and Polymarket, and officials worry about how the odds on such sites could influence public trust in election outcomes — particularly when results differ from what markets had favored.

Before it was taken down, the Median Strategies website included a statement claiming that “no individual involved held or traded any position in an election prediction market, betting market, or other financial instrument tied to the races covered by Median Strategies.”

A Broader Polling Crisis

The Median Strategies incident comes amid broader concerns about polling accuracy in the 2026 midterm primaries. In Wisconsin, the fake Median Strategies poll showed Francesca Hong leading David Crowley by over 20 points in the Democratic gubernatorial primary — but Hong ultimately lost by less than 1% (39.8% to 39.4%). In Michigan, polls widely inflated far-left candidate Abdul El-Sayed’s lead over Rep. Haley Stevens; El-Sayed edged Stevens by a narrow margin.

Pollsters have noted that open primaries in Wisconsin and Michigan make it difficult to determine likely Democratic voters, and supporters of further-left candidates were more enthusiastic and willing to be surveyed, as the Daily Caller reported.

Motivations Remain Unclear

More than a week after the firm began sharing “results,” it remains unclear who is behind Median Strategies. No one responded to AP’s questions sent to an email address listed on its website, which was created little more than a week ago. The company told the LA Times it was “not seeking publicity or attribution for the individuals involved and are declining interviews.”

Before it was taken offline, the only content on the site was a statement indicating that the firm “has concluded its polling project and will not publish additional polls.” “All previously published polling releases have been withdrawn and should not be cited or treated as genuine polling data,” it wrote.

The firm highlighted what it called “a credibility problem” in its first social media post earlier in the month: “Polling has a credibility problem. Ours is the fix: no partisan clients, no campaign or party money, numbers that go wherever the data takes them even when it’s inconvenient. Trustworthy polling, rebuilt.”

Statistician Nate Silver suggested on X that Median Strategies “probably wasn’t a ‘social experiment’ they’re probably just scammers.” Reality TV star Spencer Pratt, who came in third in the LA mayoral primary, offered a simpler take: “Remember … all polls are fake. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.”

What to Watch For

As the Nov. 3 Los Angeles mayoral runoff between Bass and Raman approaches, the incident raises critical questions about how fabricated data can influence elections. The Bass campaign has called for investigations into “bad faith attempts to influence elections,” and the case underscores the importance of transparency standards in polling methodology.

For voters and media consumers, the lesson is clear: not all polls are created equal, and the credibility of polling data depends on who is behind it, how it was conducted, and whether it can be independently verified. In an era of social media amplification and prediction markets, the stakes of unvetted information have never been higher.