Politico reports:
How a fake pollster may have moved some 2026 elections
Wedgewood Polls admitted that it had made up its survey results. Some candidates say those faked numbers killed their campaigns.
Well. What a change. Some election interference that can't be blamed on Russia!
The Wedgewood Polls debacle shows how easy it is to dupe the MSM with fake narratives - in this case fake poll results.
Still appearing in Google's search results:
23 Jun 2026 With the final month of the polling cycle coming up Wedgewood is once again looking for sponsors to work with. If you are interested in working with us on a poll please email us at wedgewoodpolls@gmail.com!
The UK Guardian reported:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/oct/21/polling-fabricated-data-social-experiment
Wedgewood Polls released a statement on Tuesday on social media, after the polling and election analysis site FiftyPlusOne reached out for comment on an investigation it had conducted into their surveys and data.
In its statement, Wedgewood Polls admitted to fabricating its numbers, and said the project was designed as a “wake-up call”, intended “to demonstrate the vulnerabilities, lack of oversight, and overall low barrier to entry in the modern political polling industry”.
“Our fabricated numbers were given instant credibility across national media platforms,” the statement said. “The ease with which unverified figures were absorbed into mainstream political narratives highlights a systemic breakdown in media vetting and data aggregation.”
Publications that reproduced Wedgewood Polls’s fraudulent surveys included Newsweek, the Hill, Breitbart, the Daily Beast and the Washington Examiner, and those that included its results in their polling databases included the New York Times, Nate Silver, VoteHub and FiftyPlusOne.
This is a wake-up call for the polling industry that needs to provide some kind of independent verification that any poll is legit.
And that's before we get started on AI-generated polls that could soon flood the MSM as a result of Wedgewood setting this precedent.