The Median Strategies bogus poll that claimed Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass held a commanding lead over Councilmember Nithya Raman ahead of their Nov. 3 runoff has been exposed as fabricated, with the company behind it admitting the entire release was a hoax designed to test how misinformation spreads online.
The survey, published by a previously unknown outfit called Median Strategies, showed Bass leading Raman by nearly 12 percentage points, according to the Los Angeles Times. The fake data claimed to be based on responses from 560 Los Angeles voters surveyed between July 30 and Aug. 5, with a stated margin of error of 4.1%. It also asserted that 16% of respondents had voted for reality TV personality Spencer Pratt in the mayoral primary, and that roughly 85% of those Pratt voters now favored Bass over Raman, who it described as a "Democratic Socialists of America-aligned challenger."
That claim about Pratt's supporters became the centerpiece of coverage from The California Post, which ran a story headlined "Spencer Pratt's voters could be deciding factor in LA mayor showdown according to latest poll." Fox 11 also reported on the numbers, interviewing political strategist Dave Meraz about what the supposed results might mean for the race. Several widely followed poll-tracking accounts on social media amplified the figures as well, helping the fabricated numbers spread quickly through political circles.
Mayor Bass herself promoted the poll before it was debunked, posting on X, "Doing the work, showing up, and gaining momentum. Let's do this LA!" and citing Median Strategies as the source. That post has since been deleted, according to the Los Angeles Times.
On Monday, after repeated inquiries from the Times, Median Strategies acknowledged the poll was never real. "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 emailed statement. It added that it was "not seeking publicity or attribution for the individuals involved" and was declining interview requests. In a separate statement reported by the New York Post, the company said, "All previously published polling releases have been withdrawn and should not be cited or treated as genuine polling data."
The admission triggered a sharp response from Bass's campaign. A spokesperson for the mayor said the poll "was reported on by multiple news outlets" and called for accountability, stating that "any bad faith attempts to influence elections should be investigated and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law," according to both the New York Post and the Los Angeles Times.
The California Post did not immediately respond to requests for comment on its original coverage, the Los Angeles Times reported.
How the Hoax Spread Through Political Circles
Veteran political consultant Rick Taylor told the New York Post he was part of a communications thread among political operatives where the fabricated numbers circulated as though they were legitimate. Taylor said there was little reason for anyone in the group to question the data at the time. "There would have been no reason for anyone to have doubted it," he said. He added that whoever created the fake poll "ought to be exposed, and we need to make sure this never happens again."
Not everyone was fooled. Los Angeles City Controller Kenneth Mejia, who has endorsed Raman in the race, flagged the poll publicly last week but pointed out on X that surveys had previously shown him trailing in his own election, only for him to win by a wide margin. His skepticism proved warranted once Median Strategies admitted the numbers were invented.
A Pattern Before Los Angeles
The Median Strategies bogus poll in the Los Angeles mayoral race was not the company's first foray into political forecasting, and its track record before the Los Angeles hoax suggested the operation was building credibility rather than immediately courting suspicion. The company began posting on social media on Aug. 9 with a stated mission of fixing what it called polling's "credibility problem." Its first post read, "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," the Los Angeles Times reported.
Despite that pitch, the account had only around 20 followers when it released a poll on the Wisconsin governor's race showing Democratic socialist Francesca Hong leading by more than 20 percentage points. Hong ultimately lost that race, and Median Strategies acknowledged the miss on Aug. 12, posting, "We got Wisconsin wrong- and by quite a margin too." The following day, the company released its Los Angeles mayoral poll, which would go on to be picked up by news outlets and shared widely before being retracted days later.
The sequence — a credibility pitch, a wrong prediction acknowledged, then a fabricated poll with specific, plausible-sounding numbers — appears to fit the pattern Median Strategies itself described: testing whether polling data could spread through political and media networks without anyone independently verifying its source or methodology.
Questions Over Accountability
As of Monday, no individuals behind Median Strategies had been publicly identified, and the company said it did not intend to reveal who was responsible. That has left Bass's campaign and political operatives like Taylor calling for investigation without a clear target. The episode has also raised questions for newsrooms, including The California Post and Fox 11, about how quickly unverified polling data from a two-week-old account with minimal social media following made its way into published political coverage during an active mayoral runoff. The Los Angeles mayoral race between Bass and Raman is set for Nov. 3, and with the Median Strategies bogus poll now withdrawn, voters are left without the survey data that briefly shaped public narrative around the contest.
