Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass appeared to have some welcome news for supporters last week: A new poll showed her holding a double-digit lead over City Council member Nithya Raman in the race for mayor.
There was just one rather serious problem.
The poll wasn’t real.
Bass had promoted the survey on social media after it purportedly showed her leading Raman 50 percent to 39 percent, with a 4.1 percent margin of error.
“Doing the work, showing up, and gaining momentum. Let’s do this, LA!” the post read.
That post has since been deleted.
The company behind the survey, Median Strategies, subsequently announced that its polling operation had been a short-term experiment designed to see how unverified polling information could spread through political circles and the media.
“Median Strategies has concluded its polling project and will not publish additional polls,” the company said on its website, according to The Hill. “All previously published polling releases have been withdrawn and should not be cited or treated as genuine polling data.”
Then came the explanation.
LA Times: Karen Bass cheered the results after the fake survey was released last week.
“Doing the work, showing up, and gaining momentum. Let’s do this, LA!” Bass posted on Twitter from her campaign account, citing Median Strategies as the source.
The post has since been… https://t.co/oLnUTIK7A4 pic.twitter.com/UbJjq6ZBQr
— Politics & Poll Tracker (@PollTracker2024) August 17, 2026
“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.”
In other words, that favorable 11-point Bass lead wasn’t merely a poll that turned out to have bad methodology or questionable assumptions. The organization responsible for it says the entire polling project was an experiment.
The Los Angeles Times reported that questions surrounding the survey emerged after the newspaper made “repeated inquiries” to Median Strategies about its polling data.
Median wasn’t interested in providing much more about who was behind the operation.
“We are not seeking publicity or attribution for the individuals involved and are declining interviews,” the organization said in a statement.
The episode becomes stranger when looking at Median’s short history.
Before releasing the Bass-Raman numbers, Median Strategies had published polling on Wisconsin’s Democratic gubernatorial primary showing Francesca Hong ahead by more than 20 percentage points. Hong ultimately lost the primary by a narrow margin.
Median acknowledged that miss on Aug. 12.
“We got Wisconsin wrong — and by quite a margin too,” it posted.
One day later, according to The Hill, the organization released the poll showing Bass comfortably ahead of Raman.
There is another layer of irony here: Median initially presented itself as an answer to concerns about unreliable political polling.
“Polling has a credibility problem. Ours is the fix: no partisan clients, no campaign or party money, numbers that go wherever the data takes them even when it’s inconvenient. Trustworthy polling, rebuilt,” the organization said in its first post on X.
That promise looks considerably different now that Median itself has said its previously published polls should not be regarded as genuine polling data.
For Bass, the embarrassment comes as she campaigns for another term following a difficult stretch at City Hall. Her handling of Los Angeles’ devastating wildfires has drawn substantial criticism, particularly over her absence from the city when the fires began. She had been traveling in Ghana as part of a presidential delegation and returned as the disaster unfolded.
‘Do you owe citizens an apology for being absent whilst their homes were burning? Do you regret cutting the fire department’s budget?
@skydavidblevins questions the mayor of LA, Karen Bass, as she faces backlash regarding the California wildfires.https://t.co/Nkz8onjC7V pic.twitter.com/WwRwp6Imqz— Sky News (@SkyNews) January 8, 2025
Bass was once considered for a far bigger political role. During the 2020 presidential campaign, she was among the women considered by Joe Biden as a potential running mate before he ultimately selected then-Sen. Kamala Harris. Bass was serving in Congress at the time.
Six years later, she is fighting to remain mayor of Los Angeles against Raman, and an apparently encouraging piece of polling briefly gave her campaign something to celebrate.
But an 11-point advantage only means something when the poll producing it actually means something.
Median Strategies has now told everyone exactly how much confidence to place in its numbers: None. The organization withdrew them all and explicitly said they “should not be cited or treated as genuine polling data.”
Bass’ deleted celebratory post provides a tidy example of the experiment Median says it was conducting. A favorable number appeared, it traveled, and a political campaign promoted it.
Only afterward came the question that mattered most: Was the poll ever real in the first place?
