The admission

A pollster admits fabricating polling data: Wedgewood Polls said on Tuesday that it had invented numbers in surveys that were picked up by national media outlets. The firm described the work as a 'social experiment' intended to demonstrate the vulnerabilities, lack of oversight and overall low barrier to entry in the modern political polling industry, calling it a 'wake-up call' for the sector.

The statement, posted on social media, also claimed that media vetting and data aggregation had broken down systemically.

Who ran the fake polls

Wedgewood had presented itself as an election survey firm conducting independent political research, but its history was short and journalists had flagged problems well before the admission:

• •The firm first appeared on the polling scene in June 2026. Its website was registered on 26 June, and its X account was created that same month.
• •On 10 July, a Washington Monthly columnist called Wedgewood's first poll, of the Louisiana Republican primary runoff, 'wildly wrong'.
• •In August, Straight Arrow News reported that Wedgewood's website, hosted on Google Sites, listed no employee names, phone number or location.
• •On 16 August, an Urban Milwaukee journalist called Wedgewood 'a shady outfit' after its poll showed Francesca Hong at 30% in the Wisconsin Democratic gubernatorial primary, at a time when legitimate polls had her with far less of the vote.
• •Democratic pollster Adam Carlson told Straight Arrow News that a Wedgewood contact said the two-person firm included one progressive and one conservative, and declined to reveal their identities, citing past doxing.

How the fake data spread

Wedgewood's numbers travelled far. Publications that reproduced its fraudulent surveys included Newsweek, the Hill, Breitbart, the Daily Beast and the Washington Examiner. The New York Times, Nate Silver, VoteHub and FiftyPlusOne included its results in their polling databases.

The end came through the FiftyPlusOne investigation. Earlier in October, researchers at the polling and election analysis site received a tip suggesting Wedgewood was faking its data. They obtained the firm's raw data for its Mississippi Senate survey, its most recent, which was said to use Pollfish. Having identified discrepancies in the data, they confronted Wedgewood, and the firm published its statement on X.

The cleanup and the damage

After the admission, Decision Desk HQ removed 17 Wedgewood polls from its race-level polling lists and averages. The New York Times said in an editor's note that all Wedgewood polls had been removed from its poll tracking project.

Michigan state senator Mallory McMorrow, a Democrat, dropped out of a contentious US Senate primary on 5 July after Wedgewood's numbers indicated her support had plunged in the weeks prior. She said donations dried up and volunteers were left 'devastated'. On X, she wrote that tens of thousands of people gave a year-and-a-half to her campaign, adding:

McMorrow added that trust is at an all-time low and that media "needs to take a hard look at what's legitimate and what's not".

The case followed a similar one. In August, the Guardian tracked down a 21-year-old recent college graduate behind an anonymous website publishing widely shared fake election polling in Wisconsin, Nevada and California. That site, Median Strategies, shut down and withdrew its polling the week prior after questions from a Los Angeles Times reporter, describing a 'short-term social experiment' in an unsigned statement.

Asked by the Guardian how the scheme had worked, Rahil Prakash said by phone: "I wanted to see if fake polls could really penetrate the ecosystem that easily. And as it turned out, it could."

Decision Desk HQ has removed 17 Wedgewood polls from its lists and averages, and the New York Times says all Wedgewood polls are gone from its poll tracking project; Wedgewood says the fabrication was meant as a wake-up call for the industry.