Kanye West is Not Leading in the Kentucky Polls
The Claim
Famous rapper, artist, and independent Presidential candidate Kanye West is currently leading in election polling in Kentucky.
News posted on
Emerging story
On October 13th, 2020, a photo began to circulate social media and certain news outlets that purportedly showcased raw election data from the current polling in the state of Kentucky. While several versions of the picture have seemed to circulate, the majority show Kanye West as winning, or at least leading over Republican President Donald Trump and the Democratic nominee Joe Biden, with the majority of precincts already reporting. The source of the data is shown to be LEX 18 News, a local news agency reporting on the central Kentucky area.
Misbar’s Analysis
Our investigation has quickly revealed the picture to be authentic, but the claim itself to be completely false; the data being displayed in the photo is actually mock election data used for testing purposes. Some google users picked up on the discrepancy as a result of an error that caused an older cached link from Kentucky’s June primary elections to populate the embedded polling results for the 2020 Presidential Election on Google. This cache link existed for testing purposes in that election but was in no way reflective of actual votes. Shortly after the photo began to circulate, the news agency shown as the source, LEX 18 News, released a statement on Twitter articulating that very fact in order to set the record straight.
Following the announcement from LEX 18, the Associated Press released their own validation of the error--as the AP was responsible for that data populating technology--which also confirmed that the numbers did not reflect real votes. They go on to report that while it is true that Kanye did make it on to the ballot in Kentucky, and a few limited other states, he was not able to do so in the majority of the United States and is therefore unlikely to mount a serious challenge to the major candidates. So far there has been no evidence or major indication that he is doing so either in Kentucky or any other state.
