It has been over a year since the US State Department said they would answer my FOIA request on fake opinion polls in Iraq

A spokesperson also refused to answer my questions about it

On February 3rd, 2021 I sent a Freedom of Information Act request to the US State Department for internal documents discussing potentially fabricated polling from Iraq. I sent them this request after corresponding with Michael Spagat, a professor at Royal Holloway University, London, who has alleged that some of the polls conducted by contractors for the State Department between 2006 and 2010 contain fabricated data. The proof Spagat presents is, in my opinion (and I have to say that for legal reasons), undeniable. The story has been lightly covered elsewhere, including by Natalie Jackson, formerly of Huffington Post’s Pollster.com, and Andrew Gelman at his blog.

Spagat’s research, as well as other stories of fabricated international polling data and examples of misuses of polling at home, constitute part of Chapter 4 of my forthcoming book STRENGTH IN NUMBERS. Since I have passed the anniversary of my FOIA I thought I’d share a bit of that story.

In the early-2010s, pollsters were ju…