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When Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass amplified the results last week of a favorable political poll that turned out to be fake, she was inadvertently following in the footsteps of conservative Detroit singer Kid Rock.
In 2017, as Rock — real name Robert Ritchie — publicly contemplated a run for U.S. Senate in his home state of Michigan, he posted on social media the results of a poll conducted by a firm calling itself Delphi Analytica that showed him leading Democratic incumbent Debbie Stabenow.
But those results were bogus. The people behind Delphi Analytica took down their website and refused to be identified, telling a local reporter: “Thanks again and go kid rock.”
Little is known about who was responsible for a poll supposedly conducted by an outfit calling itself Median Strategies showing Bass with a wide lead in the L.A. mayoral race over Councilmember Nithya Raman.
The group told The Times on Monday that its results were also fake.
But the episode has revived questions about whether political polling can be trusted, particularly in light of several recent high-profile primary races in which the polls seemed to have gotten the results wrong.
In the Michigan Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate, a number of preelection polls showed progressive Abdul El-Sayed holding a commanding, double-digit lead over Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.), but on election night, El-Sayed eked out a one-point victory.
The bogus poll — which the company claimed was a social media experiment — also showed Bass picking up support from most voters who supported Spencer Pratt in the mayoral primary.
In Wisconsin, numerous polls showed progressive state Rep. Francesca Hong leading Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley in the Democratic primary for governor. Crowley narrowly defeated Hong in the primary.
Median Strategies — the entity behind the fake Los Angeles poll — claimed on social media that it had also conducted polling in the Wisconsin Democratic gubernatorial race and that it had also gotten it wrong about Hong.
Polling in primary elections can be particularly difficult, because it can be hard to know who will actually show up on election day, said Christian Grose, a USC political science professor. Both Michigan and Wisconsin also hold open primaries, meaning that any voter can cast a ballot in a race, regardless of party affiliation, making it harder for pollsters to predict exactly who will cast a ballot on election day.
Experts say fake polls are exceedingly rare but that these recent election results highlight the differences between high- and low-quality polls and how much easier it has become to conduct less rigorous polling.
“The barriers to entry are a lot lower now than they were 20 to 30 years ago,” said Charles Franklin, a professor of law and public policy at Marquette Law School who conducts the Marquette Law School Poll.