The Telegraph has picked up an interesting story from the Los Angeles Times: “Polling putting Democratic Socialist in the lead was fake, admits firm”
Polling that projected a Democratic Socialist candidate had a commanding lead over her main rival was fake.
Progressive Francesca Hong was seen as a front-runner in the primary to be the Democratic nominee for Wisconsin governor, but went on to lose.
Median Strategies, which billed itself as a trustworthy, non-partisan polling company, projected that Ms Hong had a more than 20-point lead over moderate David Crowley.
However, on Aug 11, she narrowly lost to Mr Crowley, handing establishment Democrats a win following a wave of victories by Left-wing candidates.
Median Strategies has now admitted the polling data were faked and part of a “short-term social experiment”, following a report by The Los Angeles Times.
Note that, although in that primary Median Strategies falsely raised the hopes of the extreme Left, in another contest the company put out fake polling that exaggerated the lead of the establishment Democrat over the extreme leftist:
The company had also released incorrect data showing Karen Bass, the mayor of LA, had a double-digit lead over Nithya Raman, a city council member and Democratic Socialist, before the mayoral run-off in November.
I don’t know quite what to think of this. The Telegraph commenters, few of whom appear have read as far as the part about Bass vs Raman, think that this proves their long-held suspicion that all polls are lies put out by left wingers to artificially boost support for left wing ideas. This suspicion is not true. Polls are frequently wrong, they are sometimes skewed by the political biases of the people who set the questions and interpret the answers, but they are not generally made up. Reputable polling companies like YouGov and Ipsos scarcely make any profit from their political polls; their real business is market research. They do the voting intention polls to demonstrate their honesty, and to show that opinion polls can tease out meaningful information from the background noise. And I hate to say it, but millions upon millions of people truly support left wing ideas because it would be so nice if you really could make people rich and safe and good by decree.
Getting back to Median Strategies, I see that the US media fell for the hoax. For once, I do not blame them. It was a genuinely interesting experiment but it destroys trust. Perhaps that is a good thing in a world full of increasingly sophisticated lies, but, somehow, this obscure story about some fake polls in a foreign country disturbed me more than one would expect.
“The Telegraph commenters, few of whom appear have read as far as the part about Bass vs Raman, think that this proves their long-held suspicion that all polls are lies put out by left wingers to artificially boost support for left wing ideas. This suspicion is not true.”
And I’ve got a bridge for sale. Every single poll ever understates the right wing vote, and overstates the left wing vote. Funny that. There’s never been a poll that says the right’s vote is higher than it ends up being. One of two things must be true – either this is deliberate, or its a known error but they do nothing about it. When an ‘error’ happens in only one direction is by design, not happenstance.
Its a given that the sort of people who work in these companies will be Lefties, its all media work. Do you really think such people are going to tell the truth about the popularity of their personal political opponents? Would the type of people who work in polling in the UK be happy to promote the popularity of Reform or Restore? Of course they wouldn’t, they’d do everything they can to make sure the Right’s true poll numbers are suppressed.
Leftyism is ALL about control. Without control it withers because people choose something else. Controlling polling data is a key part of this. Oh look! Everyone agrees with my woke worldview and if you don’t then you’re a bad person.
Why, for example, did the government just veto publishing immigrant crime statistics? Well because the truth would fuck their intended narrative.