A troubling trend of fake polls and lying pollsters, with FiftyPlusOne’s Mary Radcliffe

On this week’s *Strength In Numbers* podcast, Elliott is joined by Mary Radcliffe, head of research at FiftyPlusOne, to dig into a truly wild week in polling. This week truly had it all: one “pollster” that turned out to be entirely fictional, a real pollster that admitted to reassigning respondents’ vote choices, and two firms that our investigation found were doing polls for campaigns but passing them off as non-partisan, public surveys. Plus, we talk about how to navigate the polling landscape given the increasingly low barrier to entry in public opinion research. Here are the big takeaways: \* **A firm called “Median Strategies” faked polls in California and Wisconsin.** The firm told the LA Times it had invented its results as a “social experiment,” then scrubbed its anonymously registered website once reporters started asking for methodological details. Mary explains why FiftyPlusOne never reported on this organization’s “polls” and the screening questions she asks every pollster before she shares their numbers at 50+1. \* **A pollster called The Public Sentiment Institute admitted to reassigning respondents’ vote choices to boost numbers for one candidate** — who coincidentally paid for the company’s polls, which it didn’t disclose**.** TPSI says they “leaned” respondents who had selected voting for Jay Collins toward James Fishback — whose campaign, it turns out, had paid them about $1,500 shortly before the polls came out. Collins finished in the mid-20s, and Fishback got 10%. \* **Fake polls have always been around. But it’s easier than ever to conduct surveys that are both real and unprofessional or low-quality.** A firm called Research 2000 faked Daily Kos’s daily Obama approval tracker for over a year before they got caught. Now, in 2026, AI tools make it trivial for enterprising young coders to fabricate release paperwork and even topline and crosstab data — and anonymous prediction markets create an avenue for payoff. Mary says that social media accounts that collect and republish polls should only publish verified results, and link to their sources (instead of posting screenshots of polls to go viral). Better yet, just go to FiftyPlusOne.news for all your polling needs. Thanks to everyone who joined us for the weekly live stream on Substack, and we’ll be back next week! **As a reminder,** paid subscribers to *Strength In Numbers* get to participate in our live Q&A! If you missed our video livestream, you can watch it by clicking play on the web version of this post at gelliottmorris.com. You can also subscribe to us on your favorite podcast app to listen on your own time. And if you do listen via one of those apps, **please drop us a five-star rating and review if you feel we’ve earned it — it really helps people discover the show!** If you value this work and want to help keep it going, please consider becoming a premium subscriber to *Strength In Numbers*. Paid subscriptions support this podcast, the newsletter, and the time it takes to do original data-driven analysis of politics and elections. Paying subscribers also gain the ability to send in questions during our live streams, so you can directly shape the conversations we’re having on the podcast. You can read the transcript of our conversation by clicking the headline of this article to take you to the web version of the podcast, then clicking the button just below the byline that looks either like a piece of paper or is labeled “Transcript,” like so: If you’re a reader of *Strength in Numbers* and haven’t yet subscribed to David’s newsletter, head to the-downballot.com. And if you’re coming from David’s site, subscribe here to get the numbers behind the news. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gelliottmorris.com/subscribe