A poll claiming Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass was leading Council member Nithya Raman by a wide margin — and picking up support from most voters who supported 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.
“Faced with a choice between the incumbent and a Democratic Socialists of America-aligned challenger, most Pratt voters appear to be treating Bass as the more familiar, more moderate option rather than sitting out the race,” Median wrote in its analysis.
That angle led to a headline in the California Post, which declared that “Spencer Pratt’s voters could be deciding factor in LA mayor showdown according to latest poll.”
The Post didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
Bass cheered the results after the fake survey was released last week.
“Doing the work, showing up, and gaining momentum. Let’s do this, LA!” Bass posted on X from her campaign account, citing Median Strategies as the source.
The post has since been deleted.
“This poll was reported on by a news outlet,” a Bass campaign spokesperson said. “Any bad faith attempts to influence elections should be investigated and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
Controller Kenneth Mejia, who endorsed Raman in the race, also took note of the poll last week — but in a post on X noted that polls had shown him losing, only to be proven wrong when he won his election by a wide margin.
Median, which declined an interview, began posting on social media on Aug. 9 and had a total of about 20 followers.
“Polling has a credibility problem. Ours is the fix: no partisan clients, no campaign or party money, numbers that go wherever the data takes them even when it’s inconvenient. Trustworthy polling, rebuilt,” it wrote in its first post.
Median then released a poll on the Wisconsin gubernatorial race showing Democratic socialist Francesca Hong up by more than 20 percentage points. Hong ended up losing.
“We got Wisconsin wrong- and by quite a margin too,” the firm posted on Aug 12.
The next day it released its L.A. mayor’s race poll.
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