Median Strategies, a firm that released data showing significant leads for Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and former Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong, announced Monday that it has ceased operations. A statement on the company’s website noted that it has concluded its polling project and will withdraw all previously published releases. The firm stated the data should not be treated as genuine and should no longer be cited.
The company described its existence as a short-term social experiment intended to test how unverified polling information could spread through the political information ecosystem. Prior to this announcement, the firm released a survey of 560 Angelenos claiming Mayor Bass held a 12-point lead over City Council member Nithya Raman. A second release claimed Hong held a 20-point lead in her race; however, Hong lost her primary election last week.
The Los Angeles Times reported that Median Strategies declined interviews and stated they were not seeking publicity for the individuals involved. Mayor Bass initially shared the firm’s data on social media as evidence of her campaign's momentum. Following the disclosure that the poll was fake, the Bass campaign called for an investigation into attempts to influence elections, while the Raman campaign criticized the mayor's team for promoting unvetted information.
The scale of the impact involves the thousands of voters and social media users who engaged with the retracted data across two states. While the firm cited a specific sample size of 560 people for one poll to establish a 4.1 percent margin of error, the disclosure that no such polling took place means any strategic decisions or financial contributions made based on these "wide margins" were informed by non-existent data. Residents in these districts would have noticed these numbers in news reports or candidate social media feeds, potentially altering their perception of which candidates were most likely to win or were in need of support.
The incident sets a precedent for how campaigns and news organizations verify third-party data providers. The use of the "social experiment" label by Median Strategies highlights a vulnerability in the political information ecosystem where unverified sources can gain mainstream traction. Moving forward, the Los Angeles runoff election remains scheduled for November. No specific dates for the requested investigation into the firm’s activities have been reported, and the firm has stated it will not publish further information.