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Polls released this election cycle by a firm called “Median Strategies” were fake, the company admitted, raising alarm that false numbers could be used to manipulate future electoral outcomes or prediction market betting.

A Median Strategies poll in the Los Angeles mayoral race, published earlier this month, showed incumbent Mayor Karen Bass ahead of city council member Nithya Raman by nearly 12 points. Bass cited the poll as evidence to voters that she was on the path to victory in November.

“Doing the work, showing up, and gaining momentum. Let’s do this, LA!” Bass wrote in a now-deleted post on X.

Upon closer examination by The Los Angeles Times, however, the numbers didn’t seem to make any sense. When contacted by the publication about their polls, Median Strategies admitted the numbers were falsified.

“All previously published polling releases have been withdrawn and should not be cited or treated as genuine polling data,” the company wrote on its website, adding that their work was part of a “short-term social experiment examining how purported polling information could enter and spread through the political information ecosystem without independent verification.”

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Bass’s post on social media indicates that the company’s experiment — if that was indeed the reason they posted the fake numbers — successfully showcased how little polling data is actually scrutinized. A........

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