A polling firm that spent months pumping out numbers in key races across the country admitted Tuesday evening that nearly all of them were fake.
Wedgewood Polls now claims the entire operation was a social experiment meant to expose lazy vetting in the polling world. Some election observers aren’t buying that explanation, and the timing of the confession gives them every reason to doubt it.
In its statement, Wedgewood cast itself as a kind of whistleblower. “Having previously worked in the polling and research sector, we watched as the public’s trust in polling eroded alongside a rise in unverified, low-quality methodology,” the firm said.
It then described what it claimed was the project’s goal. “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 statement also turned to the aggregators that published its work. “Despite having no history, formal credentials, or real data behind the vast majority of our releases, Wedgewood Polling was added to major polling aggregators, including The New York Times, FiftyPlusOne, and VoteHub, and repeatedly treated as a legitimate data source,” Wedgewood claimed.
Next, the firm addressed the press. “Our fabricated numbers were given instant credibility across national media platforms-including being cited on air and in reporting by outlets such as MS NOW,” it added. “The ease with which unverified figures were absorbed into mainstream political narratives highlights a systemic breakdown in media vetting and data aggregation.”
Mark Mitchell, the head pollster of The Honest Poll, didn’t buy that explanation for a second.
