Polling firm shutters after admitting survey showing LA mayor leading rival by double digits was fake

A polling firm has shuttered after acknowledging that it released a fabricated survey purporting to show Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass with a double-digit lead over her election rival.

The company, Median Strategies, posted a notice on its website saying it had “concluded its polling project” and that none of its surveys should be cited as “genuine polling data.”

“Median Strategies was created as a short-term social experiment examining how purported polling information could enter and spread through the political information ecosystem without independent verification,” the notice states.

The firm said that no one associated with the project received financial benefit or compensation.

The Los Angeles Times reported Monday that, after repeated queries from the newspaper, Median Strategies admitted that a recent poll it released was bogus.

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The survey, published last week, claimed Bass led Councilmember Nithya Raman by nearly 12 percentage points. Bass and Raman, both Democrats, received the most votes in the June jungle primary and will face off head-to-head in the November 3 runoff.

Median Strategies said it had surveyed 560 Los Angeles voters between July 30 and August 5 and reported a margin of error of 4.2 percentage points, according to the Times.

The fabricated poll also claimed that 16 percent of respondents had voted for Spencer Pratt — a registered Republican praised by President Donald Trump — in the primary and that 85 percent of those voters intended to cast their ballots for Bass in the general election.

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Bass, who took office in 2022, promoted the poll on social media. Her campaign account wrote: “Doing the work, showing up, and gaining momentum. Let’s do this, LA!” The post was later deleted.

“This poll was reported on by a news outlet,” a spokesperson for her campaign told the Los Angeles Times. “Any bad faith attempts to influence elections should be investigated and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

Median Strategies only began posting on social media this month and had fewer than two dozen followers, according to the Times.

The Independent has contacted Median Strategies for comment.