Pollsters Exposed for Fabricating Data
Polling companies sometimes miss their targets, but it appears that certain ones aren’t even trying to be accurate.
Not long after a polling organization that gave Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass (D) an undue boost was revealed as a fraud—or a “short-term social experiment” as they referred to it—another polling entity has been identified as fake.
‘Don’t fall for it.’
This past Tuesday, the election forecasting site FiftyPlusOne took Wedgewood Polls to task, pointing out that the group had proclaimed itself “a nonpartisan, online-panel survey research firm covering competitive U.S. House, Senate, and gubernatorial races nationwide” on its now-deleted website. They presented evidence indicating that Wedgewood Polls had been fabricating its data.
Once confronted, Wedgewood Polls dropped the facade. It first made a statement on social media claiming that it was “an experimental project to demonstrate the vulnerabilities, lack of oversight, and overall low barrier to entry in the modern political polling industry.” Following that, it reportedly responded to inquiries from FiftyPlusOne with a blunt “f**k you.”
In a public statement, the fake polling group admitted that most of what they released had no real data behind it. They even took pride in saying that their false statistics gained instant credibility on various national media platforms, including mentions in broadcast and reports by outlets such as MS NOW.
Recently, MS NOW featured a Wedgewood Poll indicating that Democrat Jocelyn Benson held a 10-point lead over Republican John James in Michigan’s gubernatorial race, as reported by Mediaite. In contrast, Blaze News’ Poll Watch suggested Benson had a lead of 6.7 points.
“The ease with which unverified figures entered mainstream political discussions underscores a systemic failure in media verification and data aggregation,” noted Wedgewood Polls, which admitted that out of all its surveys, only one was legitimate.
For months, Wedgewood Polls has been generating and distributing fabricated data. These figures have been shared by numerous outlets, including Decision Desk HQ, the Economist, FiftyPlusOne, Poliwave, the New York Times, 270toWin, and VoteHub.
For instance, VoteHub included data from Wedgewood Polls in a weekly polling summary on July 29, showing Abdul El-Sayed leading Haley Stevens by a margin of 46%-39% in the Michigan Democratic Senate primary. The incorrect polling data drew criticism from Neera Tanden, former director of the Biden White House Domestic Policy Council, who expressed her dismay that “a lot of smart people fell for the op.”
The New York Times acknowledged that it had included 15 polls from Wedgewood since June in its tracker, many of which covered multiple races.
Meanwhile, Decision Desk HQ reported using at least 17 of Wedgewood’s counterfeit polls in its race-level polling results. While they claimed that removing these polls hadn’t affected their projections for seat totals or control probabilities in the Senate or House, other outlets saw changes.
After the Economist excluded Wedgewood’s polls from its model, some results changed in “a handful of races.” For instance, Democrats’ probability of winning in the Mississippi Senate race dropped from 7.1% to 5.5%, as indicated by the Economist.
BlazeTV host Steve Deace highlighted, “Remember this about the Wedgewood fake polling scheme: way back in June, Wedgewood missed the winner of the Louisiana Republican Senate primary by 18 points. Yet, corporate media continued to promote their bogus polls.”
In the Louisiana Senate primary runoff in June, Republican Rep. Julia Letlow defeated state Treasurer John Fleming with 56.9% to Fleming’s 43.1%, despite a Wedgewood poll just days earlier showing Fleming ahead, 51%-47%.
In response to the discovery of the fake polling firm, Republican Rep. Abe Hamadeh stated, “Everything is fake! Smile and touch grass — enjoy reality and enjoy the show!”
Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts remarked, “This is the second left-wing polling psy-op to be exposed during this election cycle. There appears to be a coordinated effort to demoralize conservative voters and keep them away from the polls. Don’t fall for it. Your ballot is the only poll that truly matters. Go vote.”
Mallory McMorrow, a Michigan state senator who initially ran for U.S. Senate but withdrew after lagging behind El-Sayed and Stevens, attributed some blame for her campaign’s struggles to a Wedgewood poll. She argued that a late June poll, which showed her merely at 9%, adversely affected donations and volunteer morale, leading to suggestions that she should exit the race.
“A point was made. Polling is broken,” McMorrow wrote. “But countless individuals invested their heart, time, energy, and hard-earned money into something they believed in for over a year, and it felt like a game. Our volunteers gave it their all, and I felt like I had let so many of them down.”
“If this teaches us anything — DON’T GET COMPLACENT AND DON’T TRUST THE POLLS,” she cautioned.
