alt Hacker NewsThe correctness of that being... well, a whole 'nother debate. Putting that aside for the moment, CFTC has previously gone after people for fraud.
If we assume gambling about the outcome of an election is "futures trading", then fraudulent election polls are the same kind of criminal activity as someone putting out fraudulent corn-harvest reports when trading corn futures.
i dont know if this would really count as fraud in that case either - its not like they lied about the results of the primary or anything, just influenced it by convincing people to vote a certain way or drop out.
i think this is more like putting out fake weather reports than fake corn harvest reports.