Arjav Rawal sat at his desk and hit refresh on his computer again and again. Then, 21 minutes before its scheduled Friday afternoon release, the results of January’s highly anticipated Iowa Poll appeared.

The 18-year-old Dublin High School senior scooped CNN on a poll it paid for, obtaining the results, then publicly releasing them via his personal Twitter account.

“UPDATE: I GOT IT,” he Tweeted at 2:39 p.m.

UPDATE: I GOT IT



CNN/Des Moines Register Iowa caucus poll (Jan. 2-8, MoE +/- 3.7 percentage points):

Sanders 20% (+5 since Nov. 8-13)

Warren 17% (+1)

Buttigieg 16% (-9)

Biden 15% (=)



More to come after the jump — Arjav Rawal (@ArjavRawal) January 10, 2020

The all-caps boast was followed by the results of a poll that matched the official results that soon followed. They showed Bernie Sanders leading the pack of Democratic candidates with 20%, followed by Elizabeth Warren (17%) and Pete Buttigieg (16%).

CNN and the Des Moines Register, co-sponsors of the Jan 2-8 poll that surveyed more than 3,000 Iowa voters, released the results at 3 p.m. By then, however, Rawal’s tweet had caught fire — and got him profiled in the New York Times.

Rawal, who turned 18 last week, quickly ticked off his resume when reached Friday evening by The Chronicle: Internships with Rep. Eric Swalwell and California Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, vice chair of the California High School Democrats, former president of the Tri-Valley Youth Expo.

“In my free time, I leak polls,” he joked.

Friends and strangers alike heralded him on Twitter as a “legend,” while everyone wondered one question: how?

Rawal said it wasn’t that hard. Based on past online polls, he figured out the URL of the results webpage, a trick he and his high school friends discovered when they were eager to view a recent poll’s results.

“There is probably an executive (at CNN) fuming about this, but it’s their own fault,” Rawal said. “They couldn’t hide the date until 6 p.m. Eastern. It’s really just pure incompetence or ignorance.”

Getting the information is something that anyone with above-average technology skills could do, he said.

“If it wasn’t me, I can guarantee someone else would be doing this right now,” he said.

Friday’s poll is the third that he has made public. The leak was a deliberate way to expose CNN’s “incompetence,” he said. Rawal said he hopes the leak is an opportunity to expose flaws in the media. He criticized CNN for employing people who are “mouthpieces for hatred and bigotry.”

Rawal said he has spoken with the Register about securing their information, which that paper did after his last leak. He has not heard from CNN, calling their polls “the gift that keeps on giving.”

“I’m hoping they’ll book me for an appearance,” he said. “I’d love to take them to task.”

Anna Bauman is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: anna.bauman@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @abauman2