A polling outfit called Wedgewood Polling has admitted that numbers it published throughout this year’s primary and general election cycle were fabricated, prompting anger from Democratic campaigns and strategists whose races were affected across Michigan, Wisconsin, Texas and Nebraska.
In a statement released Tuesday night, Wedgewood said it used “fabricated numbers” 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.”
The firm’s surveys had been cited in several high-profile contests. In Michigan, Wedgewood’s polling was referenced during Abdul El-Sayed’s Senate primary campaign against state Sen. Mallory McMorrow and U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens. In Wisconsin, the nonpartisan aggregator Political Polls had cited Wedgewood numbers showing socialist candidate Francesca Hong with an edge over Republican Rep. Tom Tiffany in the governor’s race.
McMorrow said the fake numbers caused real damage to her campaign, including donations drying up and reporters pressing her to drop out of the race.
“Sure, a point was proven. Polling is broken. 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,” McMorrow said in a statement on X. “Trust is already at an all-time low. We don’t get out of this mess without rebuilding trust.”
El-Sayed, a former Michigan public health official, advanced from the Democratic Senate primary and is now in a tight race against former U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers for Michigan’s open Senate seat. Hong, by contrast, lost her primary to the establishment-backed Democratic candidate in Wisconsin.
Democratic strategist Jennifer Holdsworth said she ran a super PAC raising money for McMorrow and that “this poll was used by several donors to pull back funding at a time we were being outspent by $80 million.”
Major outlets pulled the numbers
Wedgewood’s polls had been picked up by major outlets including The New York Times and Decision Desk HQ, both of which say they have since removed them from their projections. The Times said it took down 15 Wedgewood polls released between June and October after the admission, noting Wedgewood had gone through its vetting process, including questions about the identities of its pollsters, its sampling and weighting methods, and its funding sources.
Decision Desk HQ said it removed 17 Wedgewood polls but that doing so did not change its projected seat totals or chamber control probabilities in the Senate or House.
Wedgewood said in its statement that the project
