Major US news outlets amplified fabricated election polls showing gains by Democrats, giving a bogus months-old polling operation national credibility before investigators exposed its invented data.
Wedgewood Polls, which appeared in June, secured coverage from publications including Newsweek, the Daily Beast, and The Hill. Its surveys also entered polling databases maintained by the New York Times, election analyst Nate Silver, and other prominent aggregators.
On Tuesday, however, after researchers at election analysis website FiftyPlusOne confronted it, Wedgewood admitted that almost all its surveys were fake. It described the deception as an experiment testing how easily a fictitious firm could gain recognition.
“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 scrutinization exists in media and public commentary? The short answer: Far too easy,” the group said in a press statement.
Wedgewood noted that despite having no history, formal credentials or real data, it was added to multiple major polling aggregators, was treated as a legitimate data source, and was being cited on air by mainstream outlets like MS NOW.
The group added that “out of curiosity and for our own internal baseline,” it actually carried one genuine crowdfunded poll in Nebraska during its run.
The admission prompted a mass cleanup across mainstream media. The Times removed 15 Wedgewood surveys, election tracker Decision Desk HQ removed 17, and Newsweek retracted three articles and corrected others.
Before the retractions, Wedgewood’s numbers had helped fuel stories that Democrats were gaining ground ahead of the midterms. Its surveys purported to show Democratic Senate candidates leading in Republican strongholds including Texas, Ohio and Kansas.
The figures also reached campaign publicity. A Democratic Senate campaign in Mississippi cited a fabricated result as evidence of “massive momentum.”
Other invented results damaged candidates. Michigan state senator Mallory McMorrow said a bogus survey showing her support collapsing helped dry up donations and demoralize volunteers before she withdrew from the Democratic Senate primary in July.
Questions about Wedgewood had circulated for months, but its surveys continued entering news coverage and polling databases. FiftyPlusOne eventually exposed the fabrication by examining underlying survey records and checking inconsistencies with the platform the firm claimed to use.
The revelations come less than two weeks before the November 3 midterms, which will determine control of Congress. Republicans are defending narrow majorities in both chambers as President Donald Trump campaigns amid dissatisfaction over living costs and the US-Israeli war on Iran.
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