Fake election polls in 3 states spread before website shut down
What's new: A little-known firm admitted the numbers were fabricated after one Los Angeles mayoral poll was amplified by Karen Bass' campaign.
A previously unknown group, Median Strategies, posted fabricated election poll results from California, Wisconsin and Nevada before taking down its website and calling the effort a short-term social experiment. In Los Angeles, one of the fake surveys showed Mayor Karen Bass leading councilmember Nithya Raman by roughly 12 points and was promoted on social media by Bass' campaign before being deleted. The episode underscores how easily unvetted polling can circulate online, especially through aggregation accounts and smaller outlets, even as major independent trackers did not include the surveys in their databases.