Poll showing LA Mayor Karen Bass leading Nithya Raman by a wide margin was fake: company

Los Angeles Mayoral Race Shaken by Revelation That Widely Shared Poll Was Fabricated

Provpnadvice.com – The November contest between incumbent Mayor Karen Bass and City Council member Nithya Raman took an unexpected turn this week when the polling firm behind a widely circulated survey admitted the numbers were entirely manufactured. Median Strategies, the company that put out the results earlier this month, confirmed on Monday that its entire polling operation had been shut down and that every figure it had published should be discarded.

The survey in question had shown Bass holding a roughly 12-point advantage over Raman among 560 surveyed Los Angeles residents, with a stated margin of error of 4.1 percent. For a campaign already building momentum heading into the fall vote, such a number carried obvious promotional value — which is precisely what Bass’s team appeared to capitalize on before the truth emerged.

What the Fabricated Numbers Actually Said

Beyond the headline lead, the phantom survey included a curious detail: 16 percent of respondents reportedly indicated they had voted for Spencer Pratt, the former reality television personality who ran a brief mayoral campaign in 2022. Of those Pratt supporters, the fake data claimed 85 percent intended to back Bass in November, while just 7 percent leaned toward Raman. No independent organization verified any of these figures, and no methodology documentation accompanied the release.

The Company’s Explanation: A “Social Experiment”

On its own website, Median Strategies issued a terse statement explaining the situation:

“Median Strategies has concluded its polling project and will not publish additional polls. All previously published polling releases have been withdrawn and should not be cited or treated as genuine polling data. 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.”

When the Los Angeles Times pressed the firm for comment after multiple outreach attempts, the company reiterated that the so-called poll was, in its own words, “nothing of the kind.” It added that it was not seeking publicity or attribution for anyone involved and was declining all interview requests.

Bass’s Campaign Reacts — After the Fact

Before the fabrication became public knowledge, Bass had taken to the social platform X to celebrate the numbers, posting: “Doing the work, showing up, and gaining momentum. Let’s do this, LA!” That post has since been deleted from her account.

Once the story broke, a spokesperson for the Bass campaign shifted quickly to a defensive posture, telling the Times that “Any bad faith attempts to influence elections should be investigated and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.” The comment framed the episode as an external problem rather than an internal vetting failure.

Raman’s Team Turns the Incident Into a Broader Critique

Nithya Raman’s campaign moved swiftly to cast the episode as evidence of a pattern. A spokesperson accused Bass’s operation of promoting “a fake poll without properly vetting the source,” then broadened the critique well beyond the survey itself.

“It is the latest example of an administration that too often struggles to get the basics right — from posting about a pothole repair before the pothole was fixed to repeatedly giving Boyle Heights residents a Lineage cleanup deadline that the company now disputes.”

The spokesperson was speaking to KTLA, a Nexstar television affiliate, and pointed to two specific administrative gaffes: a premature social-media announcement about a road repair that had not yet been completed, and conflicting timelines communicated to residents of Boyle Heights regarding the cleanup of a warehouse site devastated by a fire in June. That blaze, which was eventually knocked down, has continued to affect air quality and daily life for neighbors in the surrounding blocks.

The spokesperson closed with a pointed message aimed at voters:

“Angelenos deserve a mayor who gets the facts right, communicates clearly, and does the work before announcing the result.”

Why the Episode Matters for the November Vote

The Los Angeles mayoral race has drawn national attention in recent cycles, and the 2022 contest in particular saw Spencer Pratt — best known for the MTV series The Hills — capture a small but vocal slice of the electorate. His presence in the fake poll’s data set, while clearly fabricated, underscores how easily a name with existing public recognition can be woven into a plausible-looking survey result.

For voters tracking the Bass–Raman matchup, the incident raises practical questions about information hygiene in a campaign season saturated with data points. A poll released by an unverified entity, lacking published methodology, peer review, or a track record of prior work, can nonetheless travel through social feeds and local news cycles before anyone checks its provenance. The fact that a sitting mayor’s campaign amplified such a number before confirming its legitimacy gives opponents a ready-made talking point about accountability and transparency.

As the November election approaches, both campaigns will face scrutiny over how they source, vet, and present polling data. The Median Strategies episode, however brief its lifespan, has already entered the record as a cautionary example of how quickly unverified numbers can shape the narrative of a major-city race — and how quickly the narrative can reverse once the source confesses the fabrication.