A major polling tracker announced Thursday it would suspend its use of data from a pollster after it discovered evidence that the firm allegedly "falsified data" in a survey of candidates in Florida's gubernatorial Republican primary race. 

The decision follows a shocking announcement last week from fake polling center Median Strategies, which admitted to spreading false polling data on the Los Angeles mayoral race as part of a "short-term social experiment" on the spread of unverified information. 

FiftyPlusOne announced Thursday it was "permanently banning" its use of The Public Sentiment Institute's (TPSI) data after the firm reportedly fabricated vote-choice data for select respondents in their survey and failed to disclose it was funded by James Fishback's campaign, one of the GOP candidates in the Florida gubernatorial race. 

"This fabrication appears to have boosted the poll numbers of the political candidate that paid TPSI for polling services," the firm wrote. 

While TPSI took responsibility for not disclosing the funding source behind this poll, it pushed back on the accusations of data manipulation. 

"No respondent was removed, no response was altered, and no data was fabricated," the firm told The Hill in a statement. "When the raw data was reprocessed following the election, it reproduced the same measurements, and every candidate's raw response share fell within the applicable margin of error of the certified results."

Instead, TPSI said in its "accuracy review" of the survey that an error occurred after the firm applied an "experimental layer" that applied previous survey results to the poll after its results "did not align with our read of the race."

"Acting on that conclusion, we identified respondents who selected [Florida Lt. Gov Jay] Collins but whose broader profile aligned with a competing coalition, and leaned those respondents toward James Fishback," the firm wrote in this document.

This change drove Fishback to second place in the poll behind Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.), booting Collins to the third-place spot. Donalds defeated both candidates in the state's GOP primary on Tuesday.

The firm explained that the experimental layer involved in this error is now "discontinued and will not appear in any future TPSI release" in its review. 

"We accept responsibility for both the disclosure failure and the methodological error," the polling tracker told The Hill. "We do not accept the characterization that either amounts to deliberate data falsification, and the underlying record does not support that conclusion."

Austin Park, the co-founder and head of research at VoteHub, noted that his firm's tracker has already "excluded" TPSI data from its averages for several months. 

"The American Association for Public Opinion Research just released a statement on fabricated polling following the Median Strategies issue," Park wrote on social media. "Disappointing to see TPSI effectively fabricate their data as well."

Additionally, FiftyPlusOne said Thursday it would temporarily suspend the use of data from another firm, Patriot Polling, due to concerns that they also failed to disclose Fishback's campaign as a sponsor behind their poll in this race. 

"We have discovered evidence that suggests both firms conducted surveys for political campaigns without disclosing their clients publicly," the organization said in a statement on their website. 

"All surveys from each pollster that exist in our database at publication will be marked as partisan, as we cannot be confident, they were conducted on a nonpartisan basis as the pollsters claim," it continued. 

The Hill has reached out to Patriot Polling for comment.

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