A mysterious polling operation managed to fool a major Democrat campaign, move real money in election betting markets, and disappear almost as quickly as it arrived.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass promoted a survey last week that supposedly showed her opening a comfortable lead in the city’s mayoral runoff.

There was one enormous problem: The poll was fake.

The group behind it, Median Strategies, later admitted that its results were fabricated and described the entire operation as a short-term “social experiment.” Nobody has publicly identified who ran the organization or why they chose three active American elections as their laboratory.

This was not some harmless internet prank that stayed buried in an obscure account. Bass’s own reelection campaign amplified the bogus numbers as evidence that she was “gaining momentum” before deleting the post after the deception came to light.

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The Hill captured the stunning collapse of the operation:

The Associated Press reports that Median Strategies released at least three phony surveys covering races in California, Wisconsin, and Nevada. The fake Los Angeles poll put Bass nearly 12 points ahead of City Councilwoman Nithya Raman in the November runoff.

The Bass campaign shared those numbers publicly. After the poll was exposed, a campaign spokesman said it had been reported by multiple news outlets and called for bad-faith efforts to influence elections to be investigated and prosecuted.

That defense does not erase the central embarrassment. A campaign with money, staff, consultants, and every reason to verify favorable data helped lend legitimacy to a virtually unknown operation because the numbers told it exactly what it wanted to hear.

Median Strategies also claimed that Wisconsin Democrat Francesca Hong held a staggering 23-point primary lead over David Crowley. Hong lost, and the company soon acknowledged that the survey had never been real.

The scale of that miss drew more than 1.7 million views when journalist Brett LoGiurato laid out what had happened:

The Hill reports that the company claimed it had surveyed 560 likely Los Angeles voters between July 30 and August 5. It attached a professional-looking margin of error to the made-up result and presented itself as an independent firm committed to fixing polling’s credibility problem.

The operation began posting on August 9 with only a tiny social-media following. Its website promised documented sampling, mixed-mode interviews, and transparent weighting, yet the people behind it repeatedly declined to identify themselves or answer basic questions from reporters.

Once the fraud was exposed, the company withdrew every poll, shut down its site, and insisted that nobody involved had traded on election prediction markets or received a financial benefit.

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That last claim deserves scrutiny because the fake poll did not remain confined to political chatter.

According to the AP’s review, the price of a contract predicting a Bass victory on Kalshi rose from roughly 63 cents to 65 cents within 15 minutes of her campaign’s post. On Polymarket, about 20 accounts traded thousands of contracts in Bass’s favor within six minutes.

The price movement was small, but the timing was real. Invented political data entered the public bloodstream, received the stamp of approval from an incumbent mayor’s campaign, and was followed almost immediately by market activity.

The New York Sun summarized the Los Angeles deception:

The Los Angeles Times first forced the issue by pressing Median Strategies about its poll. The company eventually admitted that there had been no legitimate survey and said the point was to see how unverified polling information could spread.

Established polling aggregators had spotted warning signs that Bass’s campaign apparently missed. The New York Times, RealClearPolitics, and FiftyPlusOne did not include the surveys because basic information about the firm’s ownership, voter file, field vendor, and methodology was missing.

That is the part that should make every voter furious. The fraud did not require sophisticated hacking, stolen ballots, or a massive organization.

It required a website, polished graphics, invented numbers, and political actors willing to broadcast flattering claims before doing basic homework.

Calling it a “social experiment” does not make the conduct noble. It means anonymous people deliberately injected fake evidence into live American elections and then walked away after proving how easy it was.

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Who created Median Strategies? Who funded the site?

Why were these races selected? And did anyone know the polls were fake before they were amplified?

Those questions deserve real answers before the next anonymous “pollster” tries the same stunt.

 

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