Polls the life sustaining info that pundits live and die by….I personally do not believe half the polls I read (I know I quote them from time to time but I also make it known that I think they are nothing more than a snapshot of the day they are taken).

That brings me to the recent election in Wisconsin where progressive Hong takes on Crowley and since Hong was leading by 20 points it was a major upset when she lost….but was it?

A poll of Los Angeles voters released last week found Mayor Karen Bass leading Councilmember Nithya Raman by a wide and growing margin. Days earlier, a poll of Wisconsin’s Democratic gubernatorial primary showed democratic socialist Francesca Hong walloping Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley by more than 20 percentage points.

There were problems with both.

Crowley went on to comfortably defeat Hong in Wisconsin’s primary. And other polling of the Los Angeles race has shown a much tighter contest between Bass and Raman.

This wasn’t just another case of polling getting it wrong. These polls were fake. So was the polling company.

In response to inquiries from the Los Angeles Times, Median Strategies said it was all a test.

​​“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 experiment worked, at least to some extent. The California Post reported on the Los Angeles poll, declaring in a now-deleted headline that voters who had supported reality TV star Spencer Pratt in the primary could decide the election for Bass. Her campaign celebrated the results on social media before later deleting the post.

A fake poll made real news. What does that say about political polling?

A test!?  WTF?

Why give false information?

My first thought was to influence betting on the race.

Now we can see why I do not trust polls and then I ask how many others have tried this ‘test’?

The voter should not depend on polls for their information on their decision of a vote.

I will look at any poll results now with skepticism….I had pretty much done that before but now I will take a harder stance.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”