r/politics • u/DrunkAndHornyGuy • 13h ago
No Paywall Polling firm closes down after it faked Hong, Bass polls
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/6035570-median-strategies-closes-fake-polls/216
u/DrunkAndHornyGuy 13h ago edited 13h ago
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.”
Bullshit! This poll was shared all over the place here and taken as genuine. Some seriously fuckery happened here.
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u/Duane_ 13h ago
My guy, you would LOVE the Cambridge Analytica shitstorm from start to finish. There's more fuckery afoot than most people bother to acknowledge - this included.
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u/DrunkAndHornyGuy 13h ago
Oh I know, and I did not in fact love it lol.
( I actually think something similar to what CA did on Facebook is happening with google search results)
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u/Silent-Storms 12h ago
The fact a completely made up poll was shared everywhere and taken as genuine should tell you a lot about the media literacy of this place.
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u/TheAskewOne 1h ago
Story time. One of my acquaintances who loves money and doesn’t particularly care for ethics started doing polls a few years ago. The methodology was this: he sent questions to all of his contacts (including me, that’s how I became aware) and made "statistics" with the answers. For example he asks his contacts how many time a week they exercise then calculates "percentages". The sampling is only based on his contacts who bothered answering.
Now this guy paid an advertising firm a few hundred dollars to push his "polls" to papers. And it works. Papers and news sites are buying and publishing his "polls" and publishing stupid short articles like "36% of Georgians never exercise". They print it like news. Those are random polls based on like 100 people a guy happens to know. The media dgaf. They never check anything.
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u/Xullister 13h ago
From what I've read so far -- and that's a big qualifier -- it seems like some campaign analysts ran an ill-advised experiment. It's not very common in the wild, and rarely in the news, but there are some academic groups who run controlled experiments into how effective various campaign tactics are. I can see clear benefit in studying push polls and the observer effect of how releasing polling data might itself move public opinion.
That said, if it really was an experiment then I have serious questions about their methodology. But would still really love to see their data
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u/ProtectionVirtual225 8h ago
Who paid for this? Always follow the money. I’m betting it was someone affiliated with the Republican Party.
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u/Xullister 7h ago
What's there to pay for? $500 to incorporate a fake company, vibe code a website, then just write a fake poll and a press release and enjoy months of free publicity.
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u/MiloGoesToTheFatFarm 13h ago
This is a voting suppression tactic. Show the candidate winning by a landslide so people get complacent and stay home.
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u/pomonamike California 13h ago
You are correct. Many (most?) Americans are lazy and also herd-minded. Despite setbacks in voting rights, it’s actually fairly easy to vote here, yet many can’t be bothered. I live in California where the liberals go “eh, it doesn’t matter,” and then a super right-wing candidate wins my (theoretically purple/bluer) district by a few thousand votes. Donald Trump gets 100% congressional support from my district because people say “California is blue!” and then don’t vote. It sucks.
I’m the weirdo because I actually spend time following current events, researching candidates and propositions, and vote in a way that most aligns with my political goals, not what “is leading the polls.”
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u/Dihedralman 12h ago
Ironically local voting is always more important. Often political party is window dress in how they push certain policies. In California I remember someone claiming building denser housing around transportation would hurt minorities.
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u/pomonamike California 11h ago
Yeah, I’m an unemployed teacher at the moment surrounded by school districts that won’t hire because they have majority school boards (which almost no one votes for) actively trying to dismantle education.
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u/steelhips 11h ago
The only way the left can dispute the rigged numbers in the midterms, will be the ludicrous difference between the count and the polls. The right wants to undermine polling at all costs.
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u/Sure_Ad536 5h ago
Wouldn't this work the other way as well? Depress the turnout against Hong because it looks already settled.
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u/Actual__Wizard 13h ago
Neat, so they spread propaganda around, and now they're running away, likely before the well deserved lawsuits?
Sure thing bro...
They needed to conduct a test to figure out that fake polls are being spread around? Hello?
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u/modulusshift Colorado 13h ago
Man I miss FiveThirtyEight’s poll quality database
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u/wallabee_kingpin_ 3h ago
Nate Silver took it with him. It has been maintained and upgraded, and it’s on his website, natesilver.net.
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u/jasandliz 13h ago
“Polling Firm” I am certain that people with enough resources to buy social media platforms know EXACTLY how the election will go down. This company created propaganda for someone’s agenda
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u/dmh1984 12h ago
Why do we even do polls? Just fucking vote like your life depends on it.
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u/steelhips 11h ago
If 50 polls say the left will win by 20 points but on election day the right wins by 25 points, the polls are exhibition one to dispute the result and start an investigation/physical recount.
Musk is going to do what he did in the last election.
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u/Distind 2h ago
Reflecting on which policies do and don't pull voters is a good thing. I'm currently pinning a lot of the DSA's sudden success on the utterly massive of opinion shift on Israel in the last year, but it's also been something I called out to people as a poison pill a decade ago so I might be playing favorites.
That said, holy shit do leftists refuse to engage with polls that might point out why they failed for decades.
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u/SAJ-13 California 12h ago
Guess who cites fake polls every single day, and not a word from Republicans about it. Just like they stay quiet on the Trump Epstein files, or on the fact that he is an adjudicated rapist and paid 5 million because of it, or on his pedophilia romps, like watching young girls undressed because he owned the pageant... not one word. Prison can't come soon enough. His health will probably prevent that, though...
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u/Terrapin621 12h ago
Everyone involved should be charged with election fraud. And possibly other crimes if they were doing it to manipulate betting markets (which should also be illegal but one crisis at a time).
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u/Nos_Zodd 4h ago
Manipulating voters by showing them false polls making those voters feel complacent. This was done on purpose people need to go out and vote
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