Missouri Law Review Volume 85 Issue 1 Article 7 Winter 2020 Fake Polls, Real Consequences: The Rise of Fake Polls and the Case for Criminal Liability Tyler Yeargain Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.missouri.edu/mlr Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation Tyler Yeargain, Fake Polls, Real Consequences: The Rise of Fake Polls and the Case for Criminal Liability, 85 MO. L. REV. (2020) Available at: https://scholarship.law.missouri.edu/mlr/vol85/iss1/7 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Law Journals at University of Missouri School of Law Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Missouri Law Review by an authorized editor of University of Missouri School of Law Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Yeargain: Fake Polls, Real Consequences Fake Polls, Real Consequences: The Rise of Fake Polls and the Case for Criminal Liability Tyler Yeargain* ABSTRACT For better or for worse, election polls drive the vast majority of political journalism and analysis. Polls are frequently taken at face value and reported breathlessly, especially when they show surprising or unexpected results. Though most pollsters adhere to sound methodological practices, the dependence of political journalism – and campaigns, independent political organizations, and so on – on polls opens a door for the unsavory. Fake polls have started to proliferate online. Their goal is to influence online political betting markets, so that their purveyors can make a quick buck at the expense of those they’ve tricked. This Article argues that these actions – the creation and promulgation of fake polls to influence betting markets – is a classic case of either commodities fraud, or wire fraud, or both, or conspiracy to commit either.