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Over the past few months, an upstart political polling firm kept delivering good news for Democrats—and especially those on the left. Across more than a dozen surveys, it found progressives leading in key primary races and showed other Democrats in striking distance of winning traditionally Republican states. Except, it turns out, the surveys were fake. The deception, perpetrated by an organization called Wedgewood Polls, doubles as a cautionary tale about how people who follow politics should think about polls—not just fake polls, but also ones that are on the level.

What exactly happened here?

A data-journalism outlet called FiftyPlusOne contacted Wedgewood Polls this week with some troubling allegations: The firm, which claimed to have started conducting polls over the summer and didn’t list any employees on its website, appeared to have manipulated survey data to produce fake results. The details of the deception are a little in the weeds, but Wedgewood ultimately came clean. In a public statement on Tuesday, the firm described itself as a “fictional entity” that had deliberately published “fabricated numbers.” It then deleted its social media accounts and website.

Yikes. But why would someone want to fake poll results?

Wedgewood claims it did so as part of “an experimental project to demonstrate the vulnerabilities, lack of oversight, and overall low barrier to entry in the modern political polling industry.” Yet Wedgewood also lied to media outlets that did ask probing questions about its methods, so that explanation is hard to take at face value. Money is one potential motive. Wedgewood appears to have charged clients to conduct surveys on their behalf, a standard practice for aboveboard polling firms that could in this case amount to fraud. We still aren’t 100 percent clear on who the people behind........

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