California Mayor Defends Election Poll Controversy Amid Rising Polling Denialism
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“All previously published polling releases have been withdrawn and should not be cited or treated as genuine polling data,” the entity said. “Median Strategies was created as a short-term social experiment examining how purported polling information could enter and spread through the political information ecosystem without independent verification.”
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BreitbartThe statement from Median Strategies comes as the firm released a fake poll which showed Karen Bass with a 12-point lead over her opponent Nithya Raman prior to the Los Angeles mayoral runoff race in November, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Washington ExaminerIn the days before the Wisconsin gubernatorial Democratic primary, a viral poll from a group called Median Strategies had Hong ahead of Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley by 23 points, feeding the false perception that she would be the nominee. On Monday, the firm revealed that its polls were all bogus after inquiries from the Los Angeles Times over a poll showing Bass 11 points ahead of her Democratic rival. While attention was focused on the Bass poll, others began connecting the dots to other fake polls.
The HillPolling firm closes down after it faked Hong, Bass polls Median Strategies, the company that released polls showing Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass (D) and former Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong ahead with wide margins in their respective races, on Monday announced that it has closed. A message on the company’s website reads that it has “concluded its polling project and will not publish additional…
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A California County Eyes a New Hire: Tina Peters, the Election Denier The top elections official in Shasta County offered a job to Ms. Peters, a Trump supporter who was convicted of tampering with voting machines in Colorado.
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The Guardian USA northern California county that has become a hotbed of activism for those who sow doubts about the reliability of voting machines plans to hire Tina Peters, the prominent Colorado election denier recently released from prison, to work on elections.
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Those duped by the polls have begun calling for the culprits to be prosecuted. A spokesperson for Bass defended the mayor to the California Post after she posted the poll as legitimate, noting that the survey had been “reported on by multiple news outlets,” then called for those behind it to be prosecuted.
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“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 in an analysis viewed by the Los Angeles Times.
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The Daily Wire“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,” a memo from Median Strategies said.
3 details only one outlet reported
Independent claims that didn't surface elsewhere in our corpus. Treat as supplementary — not corroborated across outlets.
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01 The Guardian US Shasta county, a conservative region home to 182,000 people, has emerged as a center of the US election denialism movement in recent years. In 2023, the county’s governing body unsuccessfully sought to remake the voting process by cutting ties with the voting machine company Dominion Voting Systems and implementing a hand-count system that experts warned would be costly and far less accurate. The MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, one of the leading promoters of falsehoods about election fraud in the US, said he would support the county’s effort. The state ultimately blocked Shasta’s plans. In addition, several candidates who lost their race for local office have embraced baseless conspiracy theories about election fraud and sued to overturn results.
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02 Washington Examiner The fake polls have triggered widespread bewilderment, given how widely they were believed. Each poll was accompanied by all the trappings of a legitimate poll, including methodologies and a detailed analysis of what the poll indicated.
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03 The Daily Wire The group added that the “experiment” was not funded by any candidate, campaign, PAC, or media entity. It also said no one received any financial benefit from the project or had any ties to betting markets.
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