On August 17, Median Strategies, a company that published multiple election polls, shut down and admitted its polling data was fabricated.
In a message posted on its website (which has since been removed), the firm stated it had concluded its polling project and would not publish additional results. All previously released polls were withdrawn and should not be considered legitimate.
Median Strategies was created as a short-term social experiment to examine how false polling information could spread through the political information ecosystem without independent verification. The company published three polls for elections in California, Nevada, and Wisconsin, including one showing incumbent Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass leading her race—a result she promoted on social media.
Rahil Prakash, the individual behind Median Strategies, admitted that he “wanted to see if fake polls could really penetrate the ecosystem that easily. And as it turned out, it could.”
Professional pollsters largely condemned Median Strategies for lacking essential methodological details and noted they did not share or promote such releases. Pollster Chris Wilson observed that generating deceptive statistics has become increasingly straightforward, with campaigns and outside groups now incentivized to amplify favorable data before verification occurs.
The origins of professional polling are at odds with America’s founding principles. Early pollsters such as George Gallup argued that opinion polls would strengthen democracy—a perspective overlooking the Founding Fathers’ rejection of direct democracy and their establishment of the United States as a constitutional republic. According to the Miller Center of Public Affairs, Gallup believed polling could create a “scientific democracy” where public opinion continuously guides policy choices.
Edmund Burke’s words remain relevant: “Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.”