Fake polls fooled the political world. Now the midterms face a trust crisis

The political polling industry is under new fire after a second company on Tuesday acknowledged it had falsified data in a series of polls released over the past year. 

The admission by Wedgewood Polls comes as Republicans question whether this year’s midterm polls are wrong and are undercounting GOP support. 

Wedgewood’s polling had been used by a number of media firms, including The Hill, The New York Times and The Hill’s polling partner, Decision Desk HQ (DDHQ). 

DDHQ and other aggregators quickly removed the fake results from their averages, but the incident is adding more uncertainty to an industry already dealing with issues with public trust. 

“This is a new threat to polling,” said G. Elliott Morris, the founder of the polling aggregation and political analysis site FiftyPlusOne. “The story of polling methodologically is one of constant innovation. Now we’re in the environment where I think the people consuming polls will have to have to innovate as well.” 

The disclosure from Wedgewood on Tuesday evening that most of its results were fabricated sent ripples throughout the polling industry and among political observers. 

Wedgewood said in a statement posted on the social platform X that its endeavor was an “experiment” designed to test if a fake polling firm could gain traction and be taken seriously without much scrutiny in political discourse. 

“Wedgewood Polling was never intended to sway an election or permanently mislead the public; it was designed as a wake-up call,” the post reads. “If a fictional entity run by a small group of industry veterans can be integrated into major polling averages and cited by major news organizations, the standards for how polling data is vetted, aggregated, and reported must change.” 

But critics are pointing to real-world consequences of the fake results, which covered a wide range of Senate races from Michigan to Maine. 

One such poll from Wedgewood released in June of the Michigan Democratic primary showed Abdul El-Sayed leading with 46 percent, followed by Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.) with 39 percent. It was among a few early polls to show state Sen. Mallory McMorrow (D) bottoming out in the race, only receiving 9 percent support. 

Following a few other polls that showed McMorrow well behind, she dropped out of the race. 

McMorrow pointed to........

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