# Why Pfeiffer says fake polls can reshape primaries

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/why-pfeiffer-says-fake-polls-can-reshape-primaries/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

- Speaker: [Dan Pfeiffer](https://realalpha.app/people/dan-pfeiffer/) (Host)
- Host: [Jon Favreau](https://realalpha.app/people/jon-favreau/)
- Host: [Jon Lovett](https://realalpha.app/people/jon-lovett/)
- Show: Pod Save America
- Episode: [Trump Blasts FAKE POLLS As His Approval Rating PLUMMETS](https://realalpha.app/v/tafCtMEphVo/), Oct 23, 2026
- Moment: 20:46 to 26:18 of the episode (6 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/why-pfeiffer-says-fake-polls-can-reshape-primaries/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/tafCtMEphVo/?t=1246

## Quote

> “However, there's no question that this fake poll **damaged her campaign** and kind of kicked off a death spiral.”
> — [Dan Pfeiffer](https://realalpha.app/people/dan-pfeiffer/) at [21:22](https://realalpha.app/v/tafCtMEphVo/?t=1282) · Pod Save America

## Takeaways

1. Pfeiffer says the poll helped cement a narrative that McMorrow was out of the race.
2. He says donors and political support moved after the poll circulated.
3. He argues political coverage needs stricter standards for polling firms.

## About this segment

Dan Pfeiffer says a fake poll helped drive donors and political support away from Mallory McMorrow. He argues that thin polling in primaries makes fabricated results especially influential.

From “Trump Blasts FAKE POLLS As His Approval Rating PLUMMETS”, Oct 23, 2026. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/tafCtMEphVo/)

## Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

[20:58](https://realalpha.app/v/tafCtMEphVo/?t=1258) On the Mallory McMorrow point, you know, as you know, I supported her in the primary, considered her a friend. I sort of watched this in real time. And that poll was very damaging. sort of cemented this narrative that she was out of the race that she had lost, that it had now become a two-person race between Haley Stevens and Abdul Sayed. I know that her polling showed something different, that it was much closer than this poll suggested.

[21:22](https://realalpha.app/v/tafCtMEphVo/?t=1282) It caused donors to leave, political support to sort of abandon her. I'm not saying she would have won without this poll. Like, there are all kinds of structural challenges in that three-way race for a candidate like her. However, there's no question that this fake poll damaged her campaign and kind of kicked off a death spiral. that forced her to leave the race. It led to people calling for her to drop out of the race because there was this real fear in the political establishment that Abdul could not win.

[21:48](https://realalpha.app/v/tafCtMEphVo/?t=1308) And so all the people who, you know, sort of moved immediately to Haley Stevens thinking if we're going to stop Abdul for whatever reasons they wanted to stop him, either pure electability or other reasons, you had to be for Haley, not Mallory. And so money moved political support. So it did real damage your campaign. There's no question about that. Nate Silver and Claire and Galen on Still Counting.

[22:10](https://realalpha.app/v/tafCtMEphVo/?t=1330) um great podcast everyone check it out um they you know they made the they were making the point that it is especially damaging to have these kind of things in a primary yeah because in a primary um the people who participate in primaries are voters who are more likely to be political junkies like us who are looking at polls and you're trying to make a case as a candidate in the primary that you're more electable than someone else so like in a general election you know people are looking you're throwing all the polls into a poll aggregator and it's different But, like, in a primary, it's a real problem to have fake polling operations like this.

[22:43](https://realalpha.app/v/tafCtMEphVo/?t=1363) I mean, it's a problem no matter what, but I think it's potentially much more damaging in a primary. Especially because there's so little polling data in a primary. Like, the Wedgwood strategy poll showed Francesca Hong beating Tom Tiffany by three points. And that became a real argument in that primary that she was no less electable than David Crowley. Same thing. There's a similar dynamic with a poll for Abdul at the same time.

[23:08](https://realalpha.app/v/tafCtMEphVo/?t=1388) There was a fake poll out here with Nithya and Karen Bass. Yeah, median strategies. Yeah, that showed Bass leading by a lot. And Bass's campaign was tweeting about it and then realized that it was just fake. It's a real problem that—and I'm a little guilty. We're all guilty of this because there are these bot accounts that scrape the internet for polls who then tweet them out. I have push notifications for all of them for professional reasons, obviously.

[23:36](https://realalpha.app/v/tafCtMEphVo/?t=1416) Yeah, right. Only for Polar Coaster, nothing else. Real sicko. And, but you get these polls and it does, and you see them like take off on Twitter because a lot of people who are on Twitter, who are like political obsessives like we are, see these polls. If they validate their priors about who they like, then they're tweeting them out. It creates momentum on there. And, you know, for all the wrong reasons, every reporter and political person is still on Twitter.

[24:03](https://realalpha.app/v/tafCtMEphVo/?t=1443) And then that, it shapes a narrative very quickly. Yeah. That is, that I think, you know, our friend Carl's Odeo pointed this out, that the DNC in the 2028 primaries is going to have, they are going to have to come up with some criteria about how you make a debate stage, which debate stage you're on, presuming there's as many candidates as we suspect. Obviously, you're going to need very rigorous standards for the kind of polls that influence those averages.

[24:26](https://realalpha.app/v/tafCtMEphVo/?t=1466) If folks like Wedgwood can even get into the New York Times average, you're going to have to really think about that. And I think we're going to – and the folks in the media and folks like us who talk about politics living are going to have to really think hard about like having a list of the polls that we trust and look at. The challenge is not going to be the – like we all know who the gold standard polls are or at least the respected pollsters are.

[24:49](https://realalpha.app/v/tafCtMEphVo/?t=1489) It's going to be like sort of new operations that are legitimate but now are going to have to clear a higher bar because it's like are you a Wedgwood? Are you a SoCal Strategies? Yeah, and I don't – yeah, that's exactly right. And, you know, and there's obviously there are partisan polling firms, which when they pop up, we know to sort of already take a grain of salt and apply it to the analysis because we know there are.

[25:10](https://realalpha.app/v/tafCtMEphVo/?t=1510) a political polling firm, but, you know, could you even, could you trust anyone you never heard? Probably if you haven't heard of the person, you should not trust. I had forgotten Nate in his column wrote about two firms in the 2010s, Strategic Vision and Research 2000, that were fake polling firms. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And Research 2000 was incredibly sketchy because they actually got media outlets to pay them for polls, like newspapers, and so they were just making money on the side. That's the red flag right there. What do you make of the Brendan Carr threat just he's just him surfing the news yeah i mean there's nothing like fcc policy distinguishes deliberate distortion from just an inaccurate report right like if there's a bunch of broadcasters knowingly broadcasting polls that they know are fake that's one thing but if we all got scammed

[25:54](https://realalpha.app/v/tafCtMEphVo/?t=1554) and the news these news outlets just happened to report like you can't get in trouble for that well this is also the other problem which is for 10 years now trump has called every poll that it's not good for him fake fake news suppression poll yeah and now we have actual fake polls even though