Polls got all three of President Trump’s elections wrong.

The polling industry is already facing a massive credibility crisis.

And now a hoax poll got exposed and just threw the 2026 election into chaos.

A Bogus Los Angeles Mayoral Poll 

Every election cycle, new polling outfits pop up and flood the zones with surveys.

Little is known about these companies or if they are conducting legitimate polls in the first place.

Media Strategies opened an X account on August 9th and registered its website on August 10.

The company claimed to address the polling industry’s credibility crisis by conducting nonpartisan survey research.

“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 company wrote in its initial post on X.

But it turns out Median Strategies only compounded the crisis of confidence in pollsters’ ability to conduct legitimate surveys.

That’s because the Los Angeles Times caught the firm publishing a bogus poll claiming to show Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass leading challenger Councilmember Nithya Raman by 12 points.

The poll was a sham, and the company closed up shop when the Times called them out for pushing a fake poll.

“A poll claiming Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass was leading Councilmember Nithya Raman by a wide margin — and picking up support from most voters who backed Spencer Pratt in the mayoral primary — was bogus, the company behind the poll acknowledged Monday.

The fake poll by Median Strategies showed Bass leading Raman by nearly 12 percentage points ahead of the Nov. 3 mayoral runoff, and said the results were based on a survey of 560 Los Angeles voters between July 30 and Aug. 5. It said it had a 4.1% margin of error,” the Times reported.

An Influence Operation in Action

The bogus Median Strategies poll claimed Spencer Pratt voters were breaking for Bass and providing the margin of victory.

“Faced with a choice between the incumbent and a Democratic Socialists of America-aligned challenger, most Pratt voters appear to be treating Bass as the more familiar, more moderate option rather than sitting out the race,” Median wrote of the poll results.

This led to media coverage that helped shape public perception of the race.

A California Post headline read  “Spencer Pratt’s voters could be deciding factor in LA mayor showdown according to latest poll.”

This wasn’t the first hoax poll Median Strategies published.

The firm also released a poll showing Democratic Socialist Francesca Hong leading David Crowley by 23 points in the Wisconsin Gubernatorial primary.

This poll helped fuel a narrative that socialism was gaining in popularity with voters.

When Crowley won, Median strategies, in a now deleted post on X wrote, “We got Wisconsin wrong- and by quite a margin too.”

The only post remaining on the company’s account reads “Median Strategies is committed to continuously refining our methods and presenting a clear image of elections and movement. Though it hasn’t occurred this time, we will truly learn and improve from this. Please stay tuned.”

When confronted by the Times, Median Strategies admitted it released a fake poll in what it claimed was a social experiment to measure how polling results could influence discourse surrounding elections.

“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,” an email from Median Strategies to the LA Times read. “We are not seeking publicity or attribution for the individuals involved and are declining interviews.”

After the massive polling misses in past elections, Americans are now wondering how many other polls were fake designed to suppress votes.

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