On August 11, political pundits, politicians, and the media were stunned after Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley pulled out a narrow win over Democratic Socialist Francesca Hong in Wisconsin's Democrat governor primary. Polls showed Hong with a double-digit lead over her competition, and Crowley had even dropped out on July 9, seeing no path forward.
But after current Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez suspended her campaign, Wisconsin Democrats (WisDems) dragged Crowley back into the race and over the finish line, where he won by 0.42 percent, or roughly 3,200 votes. It was actually the second close election in a week; on August 4, Abdul El-Sayed also won by less than a point over Haley Steves, despite polls showing him with a double-digit lead, too. In LA, the polls showed Karen Bass with a wide margin over Nithya Raman, too.
Now it turns out one of the polling firms that boosted Hong shut down and admitted the entire operation was a joke.
So this is pretty wild: A polling firm that came out of nowhere to show Francesca Hong with a 23-point lead over David Crowley in the Wisconsin primary has shut down and said its whole operation was bogus pic.twitter.com/QTmlXkvGPC
— Brett LoGiurato (@BrettLoGiurato) August 18, 2026
Wow.
NEW: The company behind a recent poll that showed Karen Bass with a 12-point lead over Nithya Raman for LA mayor & showed Bass collecting most of Spencer Pratt's prior support has admitted their poll was FAKE and was intended as a "social experiment" to see how a poll could…
— Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) August 17, 2026
A poll claiming Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass was leading Councilmember Nithya Raman by a wide margin — and picking up support from most voters who backed Spencer Pratt in the mayoral primary — was bogus, the company behind the poll acknowledged Monday.
The fake poll by Median Strategies showed Bass leading Raman by nearly 12 percentage points ahead of the Nov. 3 mayoral runoff, and said the results were based on a survey of 560 Los Angeles voters between July 30 and Aug. 5. It said it had a 4.1% margin of error.
But Monday, in response to repeated inquiries from The Times, the company said the purported “poll” was nothing of the kind.
“Median Strategies was created as a short term social experiment to examine how purported polling information could enter and spread through the political information ecosystem without independent verification,” the company said in an email to The Times. “We are not seeking publicity or attribution for the individuals involved and are declining interviews.”
The phony poll also claimed that 16% of its respondents said they had voted for Pratt, and that of those voters, about 85% were planning to vote for Bass in the general, while about 7% would support Raman.
That's why the only poll that matters is the one on election day.
But it raises the question of whether or not this rises to the level of election interference.
Should be illegal (if it isn’t already). Seems like blatant election interference.
— Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) August 17, 2026
As someone else pointed out, a social media influencer was arrested and convicted for "election interference" for a meme that told Democrats to vote by text.
That poll is the same as that tweet the guy went to prison for telling the wrong hours for voting. The courts called that election interference.
— YourMothersMustache (@MakeMeSoThere) August 18, 2026
Douglass Mackey (a.k.a. Ricky Vaughn) was sentenced to seven months in prison. The sentence ended up being stayed, and the Second Circuit Court threw out the conviction, and acquittal followed. Mackey never served any time. But the process was the punishment, and the message was clear.
How are fake polls not election interference, too?
Polls cannot be trusted. We see this time & again. We are in the age of information warfare - the battle for your mind. The goal is to manipulate & control what you think, what you know & what you do. Like believing a ridiculous, Satanic child like James Talarico actually has a… https://t.co/torwV0SYiD
— Lara Logan (@laralogan) August 18, 2026
The only thing we can do is work on get-out-the-vote efforts and make sure Republicans either vote early, by mail, or on election day.
Editor’s Note: The 2026 Midterms will determine the fate of President Trump’s America First agenda. Republicans must maintain control of both chambers of Congress.
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