Washington, Oct 22 (PTI) A self-professed pollster admitted to fabricating its numbers on the US midterm elections, claiming it was an “experiment” to test whether media outlets and poll aggregators would report on the data.
Wedgewood Polling admitted to fabricating poll data and accused poll aggregators, including the New York Times and FiftyPlusOne, of not vetting their firm before using their results – a charge rejected by the two media houses.
The pollster had been releasing surveys since June and had forced at least one candidate – Michigan state Senator Mallory McMorrow – to withdraw from the Democratic primary for the US Senate.
“As one of the candidates featured in these polls – the infamous one in late June that showed me plummeting into single digits (which was at odds with our internals) – here’s the impact of this “experiment”: Donations dried up, volunteers were devastated and pleading for guidance on what to do, and reporters hounded me with calls to drop out,” McMorrow said in a post on X.
The cop out by Wedgewood Polling came after poll aggregator FiftyPlusOne raised questions over its surveys for Mississippi. The aggregator carried out its own survey using the same platform used by the self-professed pollster, which confirmed its suspicion about the data.
Wedgewood Polling admitted to fabricating the survey and called for major reforms in the polling industry.
“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 scrutinisation exists in media and public commentary? The short answer: Far too easy,” Wedgewood Polling said in a statement on its social media handle on Tuesday.
It claimed that the fabricated polls were absorbed by national media platforms.
A day after Wedgewood’s admission, Federal Communications Commission head Brendan Carr said in a statement on X that TV networks could violate their regulatory obligations by airing “fake polls.”
“Broadcasters are advised to avoid engaging in News Distortions or running Broadcast Hoaxes by airing Polls that would violate their regulatory obligations,” Carr said on X on Wednesday.
The New York Times removed those polls Tuesday night and published an editors’ note that said it had included 15 Wedgewood polls on its page that tracks surveys of outside pollsters for key midterm elections.
The NYT said it had included the surveys by Wedgewood after the pollster answered a series of detailed questions about the pollsters’ identities, methods and funding.
Wedewoods’ X account was opened in June 2026 and now displays an error message. PTI SKU GSP GSP
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