Fake Poll Scandal Takes Bizarre Twist

The Washington Post exposed yet another polling firm possibly fabricating election data. WaPo exposed SoCal Strategies, and the polling firm has gone silent on its X and Substack accounts.

As reported:

A polling firm has disappeared online amid media outlets questioning some of its surveys and employees.

The Washington Post discovered that SoCal Strategies released polls for competitive races but did not list its pollsters on its website. The newspaper emailed SoCal and sent direct messages to its X account on Wednesday but didn't receive any responses. The polling firm's website, Substack, and X account disappeared on Thursday morning, according to the media outlet.

Just two days ago, we told you how Wedgewood Polls admitted to releasing a fabricated poll regarding the Michigan Senate race to prove a point about the lack of vetting by the mainstream media.

Now today we have another revelation about a company releasing bogus election polls to the public, and now that it’s been exposed, the organization has vanished. SoCal Strategies found itself under some scrutiny for its reporting and seems to have gone MIA.

FiftyPlusOne, the polling aggregator that does election forecasting and political analysis and blew the lid off the Wedgewood scandal, also started looking into SoCal Strategies about some of their questionable polls.

FiftyPlusOne claims that someone within SoCal promised on Friday they would produce underlying data to show the legitimacy of the poll in question. That was Wednesday night, but yesterday SoCal Strategies essentially disappeared from the internet.

At least Wedgewood Polls came forward and admitted to their shenanigans. But some media companies are pushing back on Wedgewood Polls’ claims.

Nate Silver, who has made his entire business model on polling data and statistical analysis, put out a long multi-post thread on X about the Wedgewood debacle, essentially alleging that it’s not being truthful when claiming that the mainstream media doesn’t vet its polling data.

Silver’s contention seems to be that The New York Times is blameless here since it extensively vets new pollsters. However, The New York Times also published 15 different polls from Wedgewood before FiftyPlusOne caught them.

It has, of course, removed those polls since, but it seems like it’s only pushing back now after being caught and exposed, and after damage was potentially done to some campaigns and races.

Meanwhile, SoCal didn’t even attempt to put out a statement like Wedgewood. It just shuttered the windows and vanished in the night. The optics certainly aren’t good. And the fact that we’re seeing multiple polling firms admitting their information was fraudulent this close to an election is really concerning.

Today’s Sekulow broadcast included more discussion of this latest – and now-all-too-familiar – report of another company releasing fraudulent polling information as we approach the November midterms, as well as analysis on the upcoming elections from ACLJ Executive Director Jordan Sekulow.

Watch the full broadcast below: