How a fake pollster may have moved some 2026 elections
A new company whose polls had influenced campaign decisions and helped shape the midterms narrative admitted that it was faking its polling data on Tuesday night, setting off a firestorm in the electionsphere.
Wedgewood Polls, facing an imminent publication of an investigation from FiftyPlusOne showing it was fabricating its numbers, declared late Tuesday night that it had been an “experimental project” to show how an “entirely fabricated polling firm” could sway public opinion while painting themselves as the good guys. They’d left an impact and been included by multiple credible polling aggregators including The New York Times — and mentioned twice in POLITICO’s Morning Score polling roundup.
Speculation is flying about what, exactly, Wedgewood was trying to achieve, and there’s still little public information about the defunct company that had crowdfunded thousands of dollars for its fake data. Was it an effort to boost progressives Democrats in primaries? If so, were progressives or Republicans really behind it? Was it being used to game betting markets? Were top operatives using the bogus data to make spending decisions? Were aggregation accounts too quick to jump on posting the data?
An email to the account listed on Wedgewood’s X account bounced back, and previous PDFs of polls that were tied to the account are no longer available online.
Regardless of what Wedgewood said it was trying to achieve (they remain adamant the project “was never intended to sway an election or permanently mislead the public”) — pollsters, operatives and candidates alike said there were real world implications for posting fake data online.
Mallory McMorrow, the unsuccessful Michigan Democratic Senate candidate who dropped out before her primary, said a fake Wedgewood poll that showed her crashing to single-digit support against Abdul El-Sayed and Rep. Haley Stevens “dried up” donations, “devastated” volunteers and led to numerous calls to exit the race.
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