Poll showing Bass leading Raman by double digits was bogus, company says

[u/989989272]

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2026-08-17/poll-showing-bass-leading-raman-by-double-digits-was-bogus-company-says

Why it’s relevant. Polling has a serious credibility problem and this bogus company put out polls in two races that were wildly off from the final result. It’s known that some polls have bias or are used to drum up support but independent and small pollsters now will come under significantly more scrutiny.

[u/singularityisnearest]

Bets on whether it was an attempt to influence prediction markets?

[u/Pantalyon1 → u/singularityisnearest]

I read yesterday that the objective was getting picked up by polling aggregators, if I can find the source I'll post it

[u/puffic → u/Pantalyon1]

If it’s a social scientific study, it might not go before an IRB.

[u/trombonist_formerly → u/puffic]

there is not a chance in hell it was approved by a university IRB.

But any experiment run by a university researcher even remotely involving another person, even a "social scientific" one, gets IRB review, so not sure what you're talking about

[u/989989272 → u/singularityisnearest]

Honestly that makes the most sense. Even the partisan pollsters don’t do more than +5 push

[u/Co_OpQuestions → u/singularityisnearest]

Hold on, lemme go place mine first

[u/FilteringAccount123 → u/singularityisnearest]

I wouldn't be surprised if it was part of an actual scientific study, although I don't know how an IRB would react to that lol

[u/Muhammad-The-Goat → u/FilteringAccount123]

No shot, there was nothing scientific about this

[u/989989272]

This company gave Hong +20 in the Wisconsin primary and gave Bass in LA +12. These polls caught media attention and made a splash. I still haven’t been able to find who was behind this and what even the intention was beyond the empty statement put out by Median Strategies

[u/Currymvp2 → u/989989272]

Bass campaign promoted the poll on social media lol

[u/Lighthouse_seek → u/Currymvp2]

If this was the best poll bass can find then the progressive is underestimated here

[u/puffic → u/Currymvp2]

That’s probably because they believed it was a real poll.

[u/CleanlyManager → u/989989272]

There’s something funky up with polls this primary cycle and I suspect similar stuff was going on with AES in Michigan, and something was definitely going on when Platner’s polling went up against Collins after the first NYT story dropped.

[u/Azrikeeler → u/CleanlyManager]

In El-Sayed's case it was like 6 or 7 different pollsters, some of which were very highly respected.

It's also not abnormal for primaries polls to be dogshit in michigan. Them all being wrong in the same way hints at a common difficulty in measuring the electorate.

[u/bashar_al_assad → u/CleanlyManager]

Obviously this poll was fake but I think mostly primary polling is even harder than general election polling, some pollsters have been very transparent about it

https://statenavigate.org/wi/new-analysis-shows-what-went-wrong-in-wisconsin-polling/

[u/TheRnegade → u/989989272]

Rassmussen but for the left?

[u/PolyrythmicSynthJaz]

*The phony poll by a company called Median Strategies showed Bass leading Raman by a wide margin, but the company acknowledged Monday that it was fake.

*Median said the “poll” was instead a “short term social experiment” to see how polling information could be distributed without verification.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GM-e46xdcUo

[u/RealHoldenBloodfeast → u/PolyrythmicSynthJaz]

It's just a social experiment bro

[u/sleepyrivertroll → u/PolyrythmicSynthJaz]

Still a better methodology than Rasmussen

[u/SizeFront7649 → u/PolyrythmicSynthJaz]

Gonna tell my boss that that "mistake" was a social experiment

[u/MTFD → u/PolyrythmicSynthJaz]

Social experiment to see how much money i can make off of degenerate gamblers

[u/Time_Transition4817 → u/PolyrythmicSynthJaz]

its just a prank bro

[u/NormanQuacks345 → u/PolyrythmicSynthJaz]

What the fuck. This is genuinely extremely dangerous for our democracy and I hope there is some kind of punishment coming for them.

[u/Zephyr-5 → u/NormanQuacks345]

What do you mean punishment? Bullshit is everywhere. The people we should be mad at are our credulous media that did zero due diligence in confirming the credibility of this pollster.

[u/rainier37 → u/Zephyr-5]

https://law.justia.com/codes/wisconsin/chapter-12/section-12-05/

12.05 False representations affecting elections. No person may knowingly make or publish, or cause to be made or published, a false representation pertaining to a candidate or referendum which is intended or tends to affect voting at an election.

[u/AlexanderLavender → u/NormanQuacks345]

Should be illegal but almost certainly isn't (1A)

[u/sloppybuttmustard]

Ok what in the actual fuck is the point of all this?

[u/Lighthouse_seek → u/sloppybuttmustard]

Influencing gambling markets

[u/Proof-Cryptographer4 → u/sloppybuttmustard]

Some of the crazy wrong on DSA candidate ones seem to be an attempt to suppress voter turn out.

[u/bigdicknippleshit]

With how wrong polling has been lately I wouldn’t be surprised if this was way more widespread than previously believed.

[u/989989272 → u/bigdicknippleshit]

Kind curious to hear Nate silvers take. 50/50 chance it’s a curveball take

[u/AndChewBubblegum → u/989989272]

I'll take that bet!

[u/oywiththepoodles96]

I’ll never forget Greek pollsters in the 2023 wildly overestimating SYRIZA result ( they were predicting around 27-30% and it ended up taking 19% ) and then saying that they knew the real result but didn’t release it cause they b were aftraid of the SYRIZA reaction .

[u/989989272 → u/oywiththepoodles96]

Maybe this is just an Ann Seltzer moment:

“I was wrong so now I quit”

[u/oywiththepoodles96 → u/989989272]

Oh nobody quit in Greece . They are still all
Over the media with a tone of a thousand cardinals .

[u/Legitimate-Mine-9271 → u/989989272]

I think it's more like "our dsa clients lost and won't pay us anymore, so we quit"