How fake polling could upend the midterm elections
The article discusses concerns about the integrity of polling data, highlighting recent instances where fake polls were intentionally released as part of a social experiment too see how misinformation spreads within political campaigns. Median strategies, the firm responsible, admitted to creating these false polls, which aimed to assess the impact of misinformation on voter perceptions. Such deceptive practices raise doubts about the reliability of polls, especially as voters and candidates begin to distrust them ahead of the midterm elections. Historical examples, such as misjudgments in Michigan, Wisconsin, and the 2016 presidential race, demonstrate how inaccurate polling can influence political outcomes and perceptions. Experts emphasize that while legitimate pollsters strive for accuracy due to professional reputation and campaign relyance, some may engage in misinformation for strategic advantages. This surroundings of unreliable polling could heighten uncertainty and impact campaign strategies and voter trust heading into the upcoming elections.
Adding to the polling industry’s growing list of problems is a company that has admitted to releasing fake polls as a “social experiment” to see what kind of impact the misinformation could have.
The problem is this is exactly what many skeptics think normal pollsters are up to when the polls miss in key races, as they have done recently in Michigan and Wisconsin: releasing bogus data to shape political narratives to the benefit of their preferred candidates.
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This could add to the uncertainty around the midterm elections as voters and even candidates begin to distrust the polls.
President Donald Trump, who outperformed his poll numbers to varying degrees in three straight general elections, often derides polls showing him doing poorly as “fake.”
“Campaigns try to get polls that are favorable to them and put them out … get polls of questionable accuracy, but if they look good for you, get them to have media folks pick them up and report them in order to try to create like a bandwagon effect, which is a technique as old as politics itself,” retiring Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI) told reporters after his preferred candidate outperformed her poll numbers in the Michigan Senate primary. “We saw polls that were questionable right from the start for me.”
In that race, progressive Abdul el Sayed jumped out to a big lead in the weeks ahead of the Democratic primary to replace Peters. After Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI) appeared to be gaining momentum with endorsements from party leaders such as Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI), a series of polls showing el Sayed ahead by a wide margin — some of them conducted for supporters of his campaign — were released.
El Sayed’s lead in the RealClearPolitics average of polls quickly widened from 1.6 points earlier in July to 10.2 points right before the Aug. 4 primary. El Sayed wound up winning by just 1 point. A third candidate who had withdrawn earlier in the campaign, state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, received 4% of the vote.
In Wisconsin a week later, socialist state Rep. Francesca Hong held a large lead in the polls for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination. Since July, every poll included in the RealClearPolitics average had her up by at least 11 points. But Hong, who endured a disastrous news cycle concerning her woke social media posts in the week before Election Day, ended up losing to Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley.
Hong drew 39.3% of the vote, close to her share in most recent polls. Crowley widely outperformed his poll numbers by winning 39.8%. He was 24% in one of the last polls conducted in the race, by the Democratic firm Public Policy Polling, and just 7% in a July Marquette poll.
Median Strategies, the company behind the fake polls, was among those showing Hong with a substantial lead. The company was exposed when the Los Angeles Times looked into its numbers purporting to show Mayor Karen Bass with an 11-point lead in her reelection campaign. Bass touted the fake poll.
“All previously published polling releases have been withdrawn and should not be cited or treated as genuine polling data,” Median Strategies said in its press release.
“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 statement said.
Bad state-level polling in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania contributed to why Trump’s 2016 upset of Hillary Clinton was such a shock. He didn’t seem to be particularly close to penetrating the blue wall until election night.
Republican pollsters were panned for keeping the polling averages closer than the final result in a few competitive Senate races in 2022, when the anticipated red wave failed to materialize.
“Unskewing the polls” became all the rage in 2012, when some GOP data mavens thought then-President Barack Obama was unlikely to replicate his high levels of turnout and support among younger and minority voters compared to four years earlier. They believed Mitt Romney was likely doing better than most public pollsters were finding.
But the Median Strategies mess is on another level. Pollsters have been struggling to get people to respond, while some demographics bias the polls with excessively high response rates. Assumptions about the electorate that might prove unfounded in 2012 or 2022 might be truer in 2024.
DOES ANYONE WANT TO WIN THE MIDTERM ELECTIONS?
Deliberate misinformation in polling is a different matter. Private pollsters have strong incentives to be accurate, since campaigns pay good money for their data in order to make important strategic decisions. Being wrong is bad for your professional reputation. And candidates like el Sayed pay a price in the expectations game when they do worse than the polls predict.
Naysayers have long maintained some pollsters are playing a different game. In this particular case, they were right. Some will have trouble believing the polls until the one that matters most on Nov. 3. If that includes the candidates and campaigns trailing in the polls right now, it could prove significant.
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