Today I’m going to discuss two tidbits from the world of polling. In a second post I’m going to discuss an interesting and, for Democrats, somewhat chastening look at the last four cycles of Senate polling compiled by GOP pollster/consultant Pat Ruffini. But first some stunning news today about an out-of-nowhere polling outfit called Median Strategies. They polled a number of races but their survey showing DSA-backed Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong with a 23-point lead got the most attention. Today the firm announced it is ceasing operations, says it withdrawing all its previous polls and says they should not be treated as “genuine polling data.”
They then go on to make this almost unbelievable statement: “Median Strategies was created as a short-term social experiment examining how purported polling information could enter and spread through the political information ecosystem wihtout independent verification.” They then follow with a “Thank you for your understanding.”
I had to read that a few times before I could be sure I was understanding their meaning. I think this says the entire “firm” was an “experiment” to see how knowingly distributing fake polling information to see how widely it would circulate in the political news ecosystem. By one measure the experiment was a huge success. The poll spread very, very widely. But more seriously, I find myself kind of speechless. And I should note that I don’t take this admission or statement at face value. I don’t know what the story is but I suspect it’s more complicated. And perhaps worse, though it’s hard to imagine what “worse” might be. If you’re really going to do an “experiment” like this, I think you do the reveal with some real fanfare and show in some sense what you’ve learned or what point you made.
In general, it shows the degree to which the polling space is now overwhelmed by little known or unknown pollsters who at best are often using novel and low-confidence methodologies and at worst may simply be frauds. I had a conversation recently about the poll misses in Michigan and Wisconsin and I told the person that in the past I had a pretty good read of which pollsters were reputable and which weren’t. But now all the names are basically new to me so I’ve largely given up. Then I realized that this was probably another way of saying that they’re now almost all un-reputable. Which is not to say they are fake or low quality but that they have so little reputation that there is no reason to assume any reliability.
