A mysterious company is claiming it fabricated a poll of the Los Angeles mayoral race after the bogus numbers were promoted by Mayor Karen Bass and picked up by at least one news outlet.
The Fake Poll
According to the Los Angeles Times, a company calling itself Median Strategies claimed last week that Bass was leading Los Angeles City Council member Nithya Raman by nearly 12 points ahead of the runoff on November 3. Median claimed the result came from a survey of 560 Los Angeles voters conducted between July 30 and August 5 with a 4.1 margin of error.
But none of it was real.
After repeated questions from L.A. Times City Hall reporter Noah Goldberg, Median reportedly admitted Monday that it had not actually conducted the poll. The company instead told the Times it had been created as a “short-term social experiment” designed to test how supposed polling data could spread through political media without being independently verified. Median refused to identify the people behind the operation and declined interview requests.
As reported on Wednesday’s AM Update, the fake poll included one particularly eye-catching finding involving reality television star Spencer Pratt, who finished behind Bass and Raman in the June mayoral primary. Median claimed 16 percent of its supposed respondents had voted for Pratt and that roughly 85 percent of those voters now planned to support Bass.
The company portrayed those voters as gravitating toward Bass as the more moderate choice over Raman, who is aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America.
That finding became the basis of a California Post story suggesting Pratt voters could end up being the deciding factor in the runoff. Bass herself then promoted the fake results from her campaign account to show she was “gaining momentum.” That post has since been deleted.
What’s Going On?
Goldberg began looking more closely at Median and found it only began posting on social media on August 9 and had a grand total of 20 followers.
In its first post, the company promised to fix what it called polling’s “credibility problem” by not taking money from campaigns or political parties. Median then released a poll in Wisconsin showing Democratic Socialist Francesca Hong leading the gubernatorial race by more than 20 points. Hong ended up narrowly losing the race. Days later, Median acknowledged it had gotten Wisconsin wrong by “quite a margin” before releasing its Los Angeles results the very next day.
Goldberg told CNN on Monday that when he asked who their lead pollster was and if he could get on the phone with that person, he received no response. He followed up Friday and Monday, and that is when he was told they were discontinuing their polling operation.
And then came the big reveal. “That’s what they told me first. And I said, okay, that’s fine. You can discontinue your polling operation, but I would still love to see the cross tabs of your poll and I’d still love to know who your pollster is. And that’s when they told me it was a social experiment,” Goldberg said.
Bass’ campaign responded after the poll was exposed, telling The L.A. Times the bogus survey “was reported on by a news outlet” and any bad faith attempt to influence an election should be investigated and prosecuted.
Exactly who created Median Strategies and whether its stated explanation was the real purpose remains unclear. Goldberg told CNN there is now speculation online that the operation may instead have been designed to manipulate political prediction markets – though he stressed that theory has not been established.
“By putting out a fake poll, you could potentially change the prediction markets and make or lose a lot of money too… so I think one of the theories that is circulating online is that maybe this wasn’t a social experiment and really the goal was to affect the prediction market,” Goldberg noted. “If you put out a poll that says Karen Bass is ahead, that’s going to make the prediction market go in Karen Bass’ favor. And then if you were to bet on Councilmember Raman, you would get better odds and a better payout.”
“So, that’s one of the theories that’s circulating,” he added. “I haven’t heard back from Median strategies since I last spoke with them, but I do want to know more.”
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