Polling firm admits that polls in Wisconsin Democratic Primary and LA Mayor race were totally fake.

 

File photo of Francesca Hong. Fox News.

A polling firm called Median Strategies have admitted that two polls in the Wisconsin Democrat Primary and the LA Mayor race were fake as a "social experiment". Fox News. The polls had Francesca Hong in Wisconsin and Karen Bass far ahead of their opponents. However, the polling outlet said it was an experiment to see how false information could spread and then shut down their doors. Both polls ended up bein inaccurate, as Hong lost her race in the primary while Bass won by a much slimer margin. 

My Comment:

This is one of the more irresponsible things a polling outfit has done. Putting out entirely false polls is, quite frankly, disgusting. And it calls into question the very concept of polling. If there are outfits out there fabricating data, do we really have any idea of how is winning and losing our political races?

Calling it a social experiment is nonsense as well. And it is funny that the experiment failed in the Wisconsin Governor's race. From what I understand, that poll was largely ignored as larger and more reliable outlets dominated the news. 

Regardless, there were absolutely other ways to demonstrate that false information is a problem without contributing to it. Indeed, that's exactly what they did. These polls probably didn't have too much of an effect, as the Wisconsin one was ignored and the LA one only got a little coverage. But it's pretty easy to think that it could have affected things, especially in a race as close as the Wisconsin Democrat primary was this year. 

But I also think that the "experiment" excuse is probably false. This was probably a scam of some kind. What is likely is that the firm was just lazy and didn't want to do the actual work. By faking the polling results they could get attention and funding, but it fell apart when the LA Times investigated the whole thing. 

It's also possible that this was a scam based on prediction markets like Polymarket or Khalshi. Large amounts of money is bet on the results of these races and by putting out false info they could affect the odds and get a bigger payout. Given that bets can be on just about anything, even overstating a poll could cause a lot of people to place bets that they otherwise would not, so faking numbers might have been a way to increase the payouts of opposing bets. 

If this sounds like a good argument to ban these kinds of prediction markets, I would agree. I hate the incentives that the existence of these prediction markets creates and we have already seen the effects. And this could be another example, and it shows it goes far beyond just sports betting. 

Regardless, this story is going to further erode confidence in American polling this cycle. We have already seen some massive upsets, even beyond the Wisconsin race. The Michigan Senate race is another example and even tonight we saw something similar in Florida's Senate Race for the Democrats. People have already lost faith in the polls and having an outlet out and out faking results is not going to help things.