Candidate paid for poll — then the pollster changed answers in his favor: report

Jump to contentAllNewsSportCultureLifestyleA person holds up a sign for Florida Republican primary gubernatorial candidate James Fishback during his watch party at the Hilton Tampa Airport Westshore (AP)Polling firm The Public Sentiment Institute admitted to manipulating survey data in the 2026 Florida Republican gubernatorial primary by shifting voter responses to favor candidate James Fishback. TPSI also failed to disclose that the Fishback campaign sponsored the poll, prompting polling aggregator FiftyPlusOne to ban the firm from future analytics. Fishback ultimately finished third in the Florida primary election behind Jay Collins and winner Rep. Byron Donalds. The scandal closely follows another incident where a fake polling outfit named Median Strategies published fabricated race results as part of a social experiment. These back-to-back controversies further threaten public trust in U.S. political polling following notable errors in recent election cycles involving candidates like Donald Trump. In fullSecond polling firm admits to fabricating data after fake survey rocks LA mayor’s raceMore bulletinsThank you for registeringPlease refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in

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