Top panel: time series of archival u-band flux density S_ν for the AGN in Mrk 1018 (McElroy et al. 2016; Krumpe et al. 2017). The host galaxy contribution has been carefully removed by the authors. We plot in gray the flux function we used in our simulation to mimic the dimming of the AGN (host contribution removed). Middle and bottom panels: model predictions for the polarization degree and polarization angle for different nuclear inclinations. See text for an explanation of the red numbers.