Hahahah of course! Last week, we said there was "no way" (our exact words!) that former state Del. Michael Smigiel was actually beating Rep. Andy Harris 58-29 in the GOP primary, and now we know we were absolutely right. Smigiel's survey was conducted by the execrable Gravis Marketing, whose track record alone was enough to make us disregard such bonkers numbers. But it turns out Gravis did something worse than being just plain stupid—they were mendacious, too.
As Politico's Steve Sheppard discovered, Gravis conducted an "informed ballot" poll, meaning they fed voters information about both candidates before pitting them against one another in a horserace matchup. In theory, this is a perfectly standard practice, but if you're releasing informed ballot numbers, you have to say so!
And nowhere in Smigiel's press release did he do that. In fact, he went out of his way to make the numbers appear kosher when they were, in fact, pickled pig feet. Now, you might say that this is all on Smigiel, and how can his pollster be to blame? But no legit polling outfit would ever allow a client to pull shit like this, and if a campaign went rogue, its pollster firm would want to very publicly cut ties with such a candidate in order to protect its credibility.
But it's unlikely Gravis cares about such things, since their poll was already garbage on its face. While informed ballots can be useful in testing messages to probe the strengths and weaknesses of yourself and your opponent, Gravis didn't do that. They only asked negative questions about Harris and positive questions about Smigiel, which is a deliberate way to put your thumb on the scale—and ensure you get back propaganda, not polling results.
You'll also note that Gravis' poll summary starts with question number three. Where are questions 1 and 2? Was one of those an initial ballot test that asked about Smigiel vs. Harris without any priming? If so, we can bet that those numbers looked awful for Smigiel, who is running a near-penniless campaign against a well-established incumbent. Any self-respecting pollster, and any legitimate candidate, would have released those numbers, or simply not released any poll at all—which tells you everything you need to know about Gravis and Smigiel.