“The Wedgewood findings had no bearing on The Times’s own polling operation, which works in partnership with the Siena Research Institute,” the Times insisted in its report on the scandal. Yet we have no idea the extent to which that polling group or any of them place their metaphorical thumbs on the scales. The fake polls we now know about were spread on social media and have warped the perceptions of the races they involved. For example, after a Wedgewood poll in June showed the support for Mallory McMorrowin collapsing, the Michigan state senator running in the state’s Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate saw donations became a trickle and her campaign collapse. In Mississippi, the campaign for Scott Colom, the Democratic nominee for the Senate there, pointed to Wedgewood’s fake numbers in a news release that declared that his campaign had “massive momentum.”
This is election interference by the Axis of Unethical Conduct. Several pundits have made the same point: the mission of the rigged polls, which somehow always seem to favor Democrats (See: “The Dishonest Waiter”), works like this:
Phase 1: Polls put Democrat ahead during most of the run-up in an attempt to demoralize Republican voters.
Phase 2: They tighten to a very narrow Democratic lead just before the election.
Phase 3 A: Organized Democrat voter fraud steals the election, with the rigged polls providing cover, or
Phase 3 B: The Republican victory is attacked as suspicious and illegitimate because it defied the polls, resulting in accusations that the Trump administration stole the election.
The latter, of course, is the justification for protests, demonstrations, riots…who knows what else. France?
No one should be surprised at this, surely no one who comes to Ethics Alarms with any regularity. I’ve been pointing to the polling scam for at least a decade. Back in 2017 I wrote this post, which concluded among other things, “Polls cannot be trusted to tell us anything useful or substantive. The pollsters can manipulate the findings, and do.” Cutting to the chase, conservative pundit Ben Shapiro wrote on Twitter-X:
“A pollster faked all his data and just got caught months later. So, here’s the lesson: people don’t know how to read polls, poll aggregators are garbage-in-garbage-out, and every major Senate race right now is a statistical dead heat. So go vote.”
Bingo.
As far as I’m concerned; anyone that engages in publishing false polling results regarding any election, anywhere in the USA should be immediately charged with a felony of willful election fraud, election tampering, or something equivalent. These people should be thrown in jail for not less than 10 years and maybe up to 20 years for intentionally fucking with our elections.
It would be a very interesting first amendment question if that could be done. Lying in commercial speech is not protected, it is considered fraud. At the other extreme is political speech, considered the most protected. Making lying in political speech would be rather problematic.
After all, more than half the country thinks that everything Trump says is a lie. That would hand ammunition to leftist places like NY another way to lock up political opponents, true or not. I vote to not give them that power.
I don’t disagree with your overall position that it is election interference. As Matthew B points, there is a First Amendment problem with prosecution, though. Politicians are, by definition, public persons, which means you have to show actual malice to make a defamation claim against the polling entities. You might get there with the Dishonest Waiter phenomenon but it would be hard to survive a First Amendment challenge.
jvb
As you noted, the whole “it was an experiment” is a deflection. As a software developer, it is 100-level course knowledge that you don’t test your theory or experiment in a Production environment. When it comes to polling, the national public is just such an environment.
So they weren’t experimenting…as you suggested. They got caught forging data and then made up a story as a cover. In my line of work, that would result in immediate termination. As Steve W. suggested, what they’re doing is fraudulent and worthy of punishment.
I and my sister are inundated by political text messages. Almost all of them ask for money. They often have some sort of made up ‘deadline’ — e.g. There is a legal requirement for reporting to the FEC, so we have to raise money before then.
Icky, tedius, aggravating, disgusting, etc. to be sure, but two other observations.
Frequently there are dubious or bizarre messages that they think will emphasize why they need my money. Some recent ones: “Hundreds killed in Ukraine because Trump stopped passing targeting data.” “I’m trailing Susan Collins by 3 points (ed. note: Yay!).”
One of the most dubious: ‘Polls show whoever it is leading Gov. Greg Abbott’. Now I am willing to admit that Paxton is having a close race for the Senate, but that Abbott isn’t going to crush his opponent for governor? Are dogs and cats living together? Have they found Jimmy Hoffa? Is the Pope a secret satanist? I am dubious, and it makes me dubious of all the polling claims in these texts.
But secondly: I recently saw the suggestion that some or many of this sort of text messages were not, in fact, lunatic political messages, but worse — they’re simply the latest type of scam, honestly wanting to steal your money.
**sigh**
Right now the only Independents [sic] in Congress are those who vote and caucus with the Democrats.
If there were a real, centrist Independent party that had a chance of winning some seats, I’d be all over it.
Back on topic — cycle after cycle, we have seen that the polling understates the Republican vote (with perhaps 2022 as an outlier). Republicans have often won an outright majority of votes cast for the House of Representatives.
I have to believe that ‘polling’ organizations like this are part of the reason. But I don’t think they’re the whole reason — a lot of polls skew left.
So, while the polls are discouraging this year, I continue to believe that the GOP has a chance (especially in the Senate). They may not deserve it that much, but they’re way ahead of the Democrats.
And I will be voting, probably a few days early. I have to cancel out my sister’s vote that I help cast for her. 🙂
The mechanics of election fraud are everywhere. The bias of the media and absolute fake data is similarly well distributed. It will be a miracle if the DSA does not “win”.
As I’ve written before, if James Talarico wins in Texas, the entire country is DONE. No greater sign of the end of sensibility exists in this moment.
I will be voting. Hopefully not in vain.
Agree with Steve. Free speech is not absolute. Fraud and election interference should be prosecuted immediately and punished harshly.