Polling firm SoCal Strategies disappears amid scrutiny of surveys and staff

A polling firm named SoCal Strategies has disappeared from the internet following increased media scrutiny of its surveys and employees, The National News Desk reported. The Washington Post found that SoCal Strategies released polls for competitive races but did not identify its pollsters on its website.

The Washington Post attempted to contact SoCal Strategies via email and direct messages on its X account on Wednesday but received no response. By Thursday morning, the polling firm's website, Substack, and X account were all gone, according to the media outlet.

This development followed revelations about another polling firm, Wedgewood Polling, which admitted to fabricating surveys as part of a "social experiment," as reported by The National News Desk. Poll aggregator VoteHub's head of data science, Zachary Donnini, shared that Wedgewood's lead pollster was a college student who had previously worked with SoCal Strategies and funded some inexpensive polls personally.

Polling aggregator FiftyPlusOne released a report on Wedgewood's fraudulent data and received information from an anonymous source that also questioned the authenticity of some SoCal Strategies polls. FiftyPlusOne interviewed someone affiliated with SoCal on Tuesday and awaited further statements but did not receive any, even after follow-ups on Thursday.

The disappearance of SoCal Strategies and the exposure of Wedgewood Polling have raised concerns about the reliability of certain polling data in the current election cycle, according to these media reports.