Fake Poll Creator Reflects on Impact

Twenty-one-year-old Rahil Prakash has come forward as the individual behind a series of misleading polls that infiltrated the media landscape.

Prakash explained that he was motivated to create these fake polls after observing how inaccurately the Michigan primary polls represented the Democratic race between Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed, known as Abdul El-Sayed, and Haley Stevens. El-Sayed managed a narrow victory, despite being projected to lead by considerable margins in multiple polls.

“I wanted to see if fake polls could really penetrate the ecosystem that easily,” he mentioned in an interview with the Guardian. “And as it turned out, it could.”

He developed a website named Median Strategies and issued false polls related to various races, including the Democratic primary for Wisconsin governor, the mayoral election in Los Angeles, and two statewide contests in Nevada.

According to the Guardian, “Karen Bass, the mayor of Los Angeles, cited Median polling data after it suggested she was leading her electoral opponent by over 10 points.” The poll also received attention from the California Post and was shared by a well-followed polling aggregator on X.

However, “several credible polling organizations did not aggregate Median polling because they could not validate its methodology.”

Prakash admitted, “Did I expect it to perhaps expedite in the way it did? Most definitely not. I did not expect the California political press to pick it up on their own.” He expressed remorse, saying, “I’ll apologize straight out to the campaigns of Karen Bass, Nithya Raman, and Francesca Hong,” as reported by the Guardian.

The fabricated Median poll suggested Francesca Hong was leading by 20 points, yet she ultimately lost by a mere 0.5 points.

Interestingly, Median’s inaccurate results weren’t the worst. Marquette, deemed a “legitimate” pollster, had Hong ahead by 22 points, while PPP had her up by 18 points.

Prakash pointed out that at least Median acknowledged its own lack of credibility, unlike some established firms. “The field of polling is a joke,” he stated, implying that other organizations may also produce questionable results yet are treated with undue seriousness.

He noted that Median slipped into the polling landscape because, frankly, no one seems to care about the accuracy of polls anymore; they’re understood to be unreliable. If I had come across those Median polls, I likely wouldn’t have thought twice about sharing them online. Polling seems to have devolved into mere content, and anyone who takes it at face value is misled.

Ultimately, Prakash feels he has exposed and weakened both the credibility of polling and of the media which is, perhaps, a positive outcome in his eyes.

Fake polls or media polls—what’s the difference, really?