Fake Polls Exposed: Mystery Firm Admits Fabricating Election Data

A previously unknown organization has admitted to fabricating election polls in three states, a disclosure that has raised fresh concerns about the integrity of political data circulating online.

Median Strategies, which launched a website just over a week ago, posted purported survey results this month for races in Wisconsin, Nevada, and California. The company has since shut down its site and retracted all findings, describing the effort as a "short-term social experiment" to see how unverified polling information could spread through the political ecosystem.

The most consequential false poll involved the Los Angeles mayoral race. It showed incumbent Mayor Karen Bass leading challenger Nithya Raman by roughly 12 points. Bass's campaign shared the numbers on social media, calling them evidence of "gaining momentum." The post was later deleted after the poll was exposed as fraudulent.

A Bass campaign spokesperson defended the initial sharing, noting that the data had been picked up by multiple news outlets. The spokesperson also called for any attempts to manipulate elections to be investigated and prosecuted.

Major independent polling aggregators, including The New York Times and FiftyPlusOne, said they had excluded the Median Strategies data. Both cited a lack of basic methodological information, such as who conducted the survey and how it was fielded. Emails and questions sent to the firm went unanswered.

Veteran Republican pollster Chris Wilson said the episode highlights how easy it is to make invented numbers look credible. He noted that campaigns and outside groups have strong incentives to amplify favorable data before verification.

While outright admissions of fabricated polling are rare, they are not unprecedented. In 2010, the blog Daily Kos said a firm it had hired for polling had produced fraudulent data.

The incident also drew attention to prediction markets. After Bass shared the fake poll, trading on platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket showed small but concentrated movements in her favor, raising questions about whether the false data influenced betting activity.

The identity of the individuals behind Median Strategies remains unknown. The company's website, before being taken offline, stated that no one involved held positions in election prediction markets and that all published polls were withdrawn and should not be treated as genuine.