Fake polls
Not just sort-of-skewed or distorted polls. These polls were utterly fake:
A national polling organization revealed on Tuesday that the vast majority of its data had been fabricated, saying it was an “experimental project to demonstrate the vulnerabilities” of the modern political polling industry.
Wedgewood Polling, whose polls had been cited by national news outlets, released the statement after FiftyPlusOne, a polling and election analysis site, questioned the veracity of its results.
“We wanted to test a simple hypothesis: How easy is it for an entirely fabricated polling firm to gain traction, be taken seriously, and expose how little scrutinization exists in media and public commentary?” Wedgewood Polling said on X. “The short answer: Far too easy.”
And these completely fake polls, from a company that wasn’t very forthcoming about its history, ended up influencing at least one primary (was this the actual aim; to put its finger on the scale?):
Mallory McMorrow, a Democratic state senator in Michigan, suspended her campaign to become a U.S. senator in July, about a month before the state’s primary that progressive Abdul El-Sayed won.
In an X post on Tuesday, McMorrow detailed what she described as the impact of Wedgewood’s “experiment.”
McMorrow wrote that a Wedgewood poll in June showed her “plummeting into single digits (which was at odds with our internals).” As a result, she said “donations dried up” and “volunteers were devastated.”
You may recall that polls in that primary were uniformly inaccurate. Most predicted a much bigger victory for El-Sayed than occurred. However, he did score a victory, although considerably narrower than predicted.
And this is about what you’d expect as a result of the removal of the fake polls:
Nate Silver’s midterm elections forecast shifted slightly toward Republicans after he removed a series of fake polls that he said had been roughly 1 point more favorable to Democrats than the broader consensus.
The famed polling analyst said the biggest change came in Michigan, where Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed’s lead fell from 3.6 points to 3. Silver noted that the movement also reflected the addition of a Marist poll to the model that showed El-Sayed 2 points ahead of Republican former Representative Mike Rogers.
Well, Silver still has the abominable El-Sayed winning. However, when I go to Silver’s page, I see three things. The first is that El-Sayed is under 50% in the majority of the polls cited, usually 47% to 48%. The second is that most of the polls seem to be within the margin of error. The third is that, among the more recent polls, there are two that favor Rogers by small margins.
What’s it all about, Alfie? Your guess is as good as mine. But as I’ve said before, I have come to trust polls less and less and less.
Surprised. Most people are hip to what’s going on, that’s why I say it’s devolved to:Yeah he’s an sob but he’s my sob.
The Fearmakers (1958) starring Dana Andrews.
A Korean War veteran returns to Washington and finds his public relations firm taken over by a stranger.
The firm now (since Andrews absence) takes money from nefarious entities to manufacture bogus polls.
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The big story here is Mallory McMorrow’s story. “Perceptions are (or become) the reality.” You tell yourself that this is not always true (say it ain’t so, Joe!), but the more I look for the exceptions, the more I see that the exceptions are rare.
I think it’s remarkable that people generally have faith in polls for any reason at all. For a long time, I’ve been pretty convinced that their purpose is to create opinion and report the results they’ve been paid to provide.
Rasmussen might be one exception to this. I noted today that they are expressly excluded from a few online polling aggregators, something I didn’t know.
The story about Wedgewood is funny. They got one probing question from an investigative journalist, apparently, and exactly 2 minutes later they published the announcement that it was all a grand experiment from the get-go, no cause for alarm.
I suspect there are probably quite a few of these. Someone has inadvertently peeked behind the curtain and discovered a political front line.
This is from Yahoo (wtf?) … “The polling company SoCal Strategies appears to have been exposed as another fake outfit…”
Neo, in the 2md to last paragraph:
“…, there are two that favor Paxton by small margins.”
I think you meant Mike Rogers.
“ But as I’ve said before, I have come to trust polls less and less and less.”
Can one trust something less than absolutely not at all? If so, that’s where I am.