Fake Polling Firm Admits Bass and Hong Leads Were Made Up, Calls It a Social Experiment

A polling firm called Median Strategies admitted Monday that every poll it published was fake, shutting down operations after its numbers helped shape coverage of two Democratic races that didn't go the way its data predicted.

The firm popped up on social media on Aug. 9 with about 20 followers, according to the Los Angeles Times. Its first post promised "trustworthy polling, rebuilt" with "no partisan clients, no campaign or party money." Within days it had published a poll claiming Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass led Councilmember Nithya Raman by nearly 12 points ahead of the Nov. 3 runoff, supposedly based on 560 voters surveyed between July 30 and Aug. 5 with a 4.1% margin of error.

It also released a poll showing Democratic Socialists of America-aligned candidate Francesca Hong up by 23 points over Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley in the Wisconsin gubernatorial primary. Hong lost that Aug. 11 primary to Crowley by roughly 4,000 votes, according to the Washington Examiner, a margin of less than one point.

After repeated inquiries from the Los Angeles Times, Median Strategies admitted on Monday, Aug. 17, that neither survey was real. "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 company said in a statement posted to its website and repeated to the Times. "All previously published polling releases have been withdrawn and should not be cited or treated as genuine polling data."

The statement said no one involved received compensation, held a position in a prediction market, or acted at the direction of any campaign, party, PAC, or media organization. The company's website has since gone dark, and it declined all interview requests, according to the Times and the Daily Beast.

Bass had cited the fake LA poll in a now-deleted X post from her campaign account: "Doing the work, showing up, and gaining momentum. Let's do this, LA!" Her campaign spokesperson told the Times the survey had been "reported on by a news outlet" and called for prosecution: "Any bad faith attempts to influence elections should be investigated and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law." As of Tuesday, no investigation or charges have been announced by any law enforcement agency.

Raman's campaign used the episode to go after Bass's team directly. Spokesperson Liz Garcia said it was "the latest example of an administration that too often struggles to get the basics right," pointing to unrelated incidents involving pothole repairs and a cleanup deadline dispute in Boyle Heights. "Angelenos deserve a mayor who gets the facts right, communicates clearly, and does the work before announcing the result," Garcia said.

LA City Controller Kenneth Mejia, who endorsed Raman, had flagged the poll as a likely "push poll" before Median admitted it was fabricated. He noted that polling had also wrongly predicted his own defeat in a prior race. The California Post ran a story built on the fake numbers, headlined around the idea that Spencer Pratt's primary voters could decide the mayoral runoff. The outlet did not respond to requests for comment from the Times.

If a bad actor can manufacture a convincing-looking poll, complete with a stated methodology, sample size, and margin of error, and get it repeated by news outlets and a sitting mayor within days, that reveals a real vulnerability in how political information spreads, regardless of who exploited it here. The concern isn't paranoid. It's the same concern that applies to any unverified claim that gets treated as fact because it looks professional.

But there is no evidence in the record of who actually built Median Strategies or why. Statistician Nate Silver said publicly he suspects the people behind it were simple scammers rather than researchers running a legitimate experiment, according to the Washington Examiner. That's speculation, not a finding. No one has been identified, and Median Strategies never gave an interview to any outlet that sought one, including the Times, ABC7, and the Daily Caller News Foundation.

What's confirmed: two fake polls, published by an anonymous entity with no track record, got amplified by a major-city mayoral campaign and at least one news outlet before anyone checked the math. What's unresolved: who ran Median Strategies, whether any law was actually broken by publishing fabricated survey data, and whether Bass's call for prosecution will lead to an actual investigation by the Los Angeles City Attorney or another agency. None of the sources report any agency has opened one.