As Democrats push to gain control of Congress, polls that may have shown them leading various battleground races have been exposed as part of a widespread fraud.
A group called Wedgewood Polling admitted that the numbers it tossed around in Georgia, Michigan, Texas, and other states were fake, according to USA Today, which was among the outlets that said they were fooled.
“The Wedgewood results in some cases were slightly more favorable for Democrats than other polls in the same race,” USA Today noted, citing one poll that had incumbent Georgia Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff ahead of his Republican rival, Rep. Mike Collins, by 10 percentage points.
Time noted that Newsweek, MS NOW, and Politico also embraced the fake polling. The New York Times admitted to using 15 of Wedgewood’s polls.
The outlet noted that the political polling site FiftyPlusOne exposed the fakery, and that when confronted, Wedgewood said the polling was an “experimental project.”
“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 in public commentary?” the firm wrote in a since-deleted post.
“The short answer: Far too easy,” it wrote.
