Fake Polling Firm Wedgewood Admits Fabricating Data, Upending Race Projections

A fabricated polling operation has triggered a major reckoning across the political forecasting industry after investigators uncovered widespread data manipulation designed to inject fake surveys into mainstream election averages.

The controversy centers around a self-professed polling entity known as Wedgewood Polls. The scheme unraveled after an investigative unit operating under the name FiftyPlusOne received a credible tip from a trusted source pointing toward data fabrication. Investigators ran an identical poll against Wedgewood’s back-end data and uncovered a series of anomalies, including unnaturally clean sample data perfectly aligned with Mississippi demographics, impossible user IDs, scrambled timestamps, and outdated serial numbers.

Wedgewood had operated with the outward appearance of a legitimate polling firm, even collecting money from donors to fund crowd-funded surveys. The entity shared raw survey data with FiftyPlusOne on October 15, 2026. When investigators returned five days later on Tuesday, October 20, requesting comment on the investigation, Wedgewood did not respond directly to inquiries. Instead, the firm posted a public statement on social media admitting that they had fabricated their data, framing the operation as an experiment intended to expose vulnerabilities in how polling data is vetted and reported.

“Wedgewood Polling was never intended to sway an election or permanently mislead the public,” the firm’s statement read. “It was designed as a wake-up call. 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.”

Before the confession, Wedgewood’s manufactured surveys had successfully penetrated major aggregation networks. Between June and October, major media and tracking organizations cited Wedgewood data dozens of times, with citations appearing frequently in prominent aggregation indexes. Major polling averages now face the arduous task of stripping out the tainted data.

According to industry disclosures and private correspondence revealed during the fallout, Wedgewood was operated by individuals identifying as industry veterans, including figures named Jack Sims and Andrew Prater. Private communications show the creators claimed an initial out-of-pocket investment of $10,000, utilizing online sampling platforms and voter files while describing themselves politically as a progressive Democrat and a Republican working in tandem.

The fallout has particularly affected less-frequented electoral maps where few independent surveys are conducted, magnifying the distortion of local averages. In Michigan, several high-profile primary matchups featured prominently in Wedgewood’s releases, including surveys showing candidate Abdul El-Sayed with substantial leads.

Other candidates caught up in the fallout reported tangible damage to their campaigns before the deception came to light. Mallory McMorrow, a candidate who dropped out of a Michigan primary race, stated that the fraudulent numbers severely harmed her campaign’s viability. Writing on social media, McMorrow noted that an infamous late-June survey showing her dropping into single digits—which sharply contradicted her campaign’s internal numbers—caused donations to dry up, devastated volunteers, and prompted relentless media inquiries urging her to exit the race.

“Sure, a point was proven. Polling is broken,” McMorrow wrote. “But tens of thousands of people poured their hearts, time, energy, hard-earned money into something they believed in—for a year-and-a-half, and it was treated like a game.”

Data aggregators and independent pollsters are now rushing to review their methodology and filter out outliers to avoid similar compromises. Meanwhile, analysts point out that the incident underscores the vulnerability of polling averages that rely on unverified digital inputs, leaving voters and campaigns to navigate heavily skewed projections as election day approaches.