Political polling guru Nate Silver unleashed a profanity-laced tirade after a polling operation admitted its surveys were largely fabricated.
Silver, whose career has been built around interpreting polling data, was furious after Wedgewood Polling admitted that much of its operation had been an elaborate "social experiment" designed to expose just how easily questionable statistics could infiltrate the political media ecosystem.
"Our fabricated numbers were given instant credibility across national media platforms," the statement said. "The ease with which unverified figures were absorbed into mainstream political narratives highlights a systemic breakdown in media vetting and data aggregation."
In an episode of the Still Counting podcast alongside Galen Druke and Clare Malone, Silver made his feelings abundantly clear.
"I say go fuck yourselves. I hope you're put in jail," Silver declared, before quickly clarifying that he did not mean the threat of imprisonment "literally."
Wedgewood's operators portrayed the stunt as an experiment highlighting weaknesses in modern political polling and journalism.
Yet, Silver was in no way amused.
"People on Twitter are sometimes too kind to these enterprising college kids or whatever they are that start doing these kind of polls that are even at best kind of mediocre," he complained.
The veteran election analyst acknowledged that deliberately distributing false information could still qualify as constitutionally protected speech, but suggested the operation might have exposed itself to legal problems by crowdfunding certain surveys.
"If you're doing these sort of narrative-setting polls then maybe you are buying positions on prediction markets and then the line goes up and you cash them out or whatever else... or you have a political agenda," Silver said.
Abdul El-Sayed's campaign even cited the group's fake polling during his primary battle against Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow and Rep. Haley Stevens, according to Fox News.
"These people are absolute scumbags," former Kamala Harris advisor Mike Nellis told Fox News. "They can try to claim that they have some moral high ground here, but they lied about their polling data, got caught, and are freaking out because they've committed fraud."
"The people responsible for this should be run out of American politics, and if they can be, they should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law," Nellis said. He added that both Democrats and Republicans, as well as the media, should reflect on how polling is verified "because there's likely other people that are doing things like this."