A Pollster Just Admitted Faking Its Numbers, and the Fallout Is Huge!

A polling firm that spent months pumping out numbers in key races across the country admitted Tuesday evening that nearly all of them were fake.

Wedgewood Polls now claims the entire operation was a social experiment meant to expose lazy vetting in the polling world. Some election observers aren't buying that explanation, and the timing of the confession gives them every reason to doubt it.

In its statement, Wedgewood cast itself as a kind of whistleblower. "Having previously worked in the polling and research sector, we watched as the public's trust in polling eroded alongside a rise in unverified, low-quality methodology," the firm said.

It then described what it claimed was the project’s goal. "We wanted to test a simple hypothesis: How easy is it for an entirely fabricated polling firm to gain traction, be taken seriously, and expose how little scrutinization exists in media and public commentary? The short answer: Far too easy."

The statement also turned to the aggregators that published its work. "Despite having no history, formal credentials, or real data behind the vast majority of our releases, Wedgewood Polling was added to major polling aggregators, including The New York Times, FiftyPlusOne, and VoteHub, and repeatedly treated as a legitimate data source," Wedgewood claimed.

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Next, the firm addressed the press. "Our fabricated numbers were given instant credibility across national media platforms-including being cited on air and in reporting by outlets such as MS NOW," it added. "The ease with which unverified figures were absorbed into mainstream political narratives highlights a systemic breakdown in media vetting and data aggregation."

Mark Mitchell, the head pollster of The Honest Poll, didn’t buy that explanation for a second.

Wedgewood is absolutely correct that bogus polls get widely spread with no thought to validity, especially by naked partisans who are shoveling slop. That said, Wedgewood publicly lied to the American people, so that's a NO from me, dog.

— Mark Mitchell, Honest Pollster (@honestpollster) October 20, 2026

Cooper Burton, a data scientist at FiftyPlusOne, responded to Wedgewood's statement within hours.

This is incredibly misleading. @50plus1news was planning to publish an investigation into Wedgewood's polls tomorrow morning, and reached out to them this morning for comment. This is just an attempt to save face after they realized we caught them.

— Cooper Burton (@cooperrburton) October 20, 2026

Once Wedgewood went public, FiftyPlusOne published its investigation early. The report took on the firm's claim that nobody checked its credentials.

Their statement alleges that FiftyPlusOne, the New York Times, and other poll aggregators did not conduct appropriate vetting of their firm prior to aggregating their polls; this is false. We reached out to them to ask who they were and confirm the methodology statement on their website. We were given two names, Jack Sims and Andrew Prater. We were able to independently confirm that Sims had previous experience in the polling industry and reviewed their methodology statement in detail. It is not atypical for a pollster to leave an existing firm, form their own, and self-fund some surveys to build reputation; we had no reason at the time to believe this case was any different. Wedgewood operated as if it were a legitimate polling firm, including collecting money from donors to conduct crowd-funded polls, and sharing raw survey data (which we now have confirmed was fraudulent) with FiftyPlusOne on Oct. 15, 2026.

Imagine that — Wedgewood took money from donors and handed over raw data it had invented. Sorry, but that’s not a harmless experiment. In fact, these phony numbers did have real-world impact.

El-Sayed leaned heavily on Wedgewood's polling to sell Democrat voters on his electability. Mallory McMorrow, who ran against him in the Michigan primary, took to X to describe what the stunt cost her campaign. She pointed to a late-June Wedgewood poll that showed her sinking into single digits, numbers she said contradicted her campaign’s internal polling. In the aftermath, her donations dried up, her volunteers were left devastated and begging for direction, and reporters bombarded her with calls to get out of the race.

Without a doubt, a fake poll can affect an election. It can stop a candidate from raising money, boost another candidate, or cause a party to invest in a place it otherwise wouldn’t. And it can lead voters to think the result is already decided before any ballot has been cast.

Editor’s Note: The 2026 Midterms will determine the fate of President Trump’s America First agenda. Republicans must maintain control of both chambers of Congress.

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