by WorldTribune Staff, October 23, 2026 — Real World News
Wedgewood Polls has admitted that the vast majority of its polling data covering key midterm battleground states was entirely fabricated.
The fraudulent datasets were aggregated and reported by legacy media outlets including The New York Times.
Most of Wedgewood’s fake data appears aimed at promoting Democrats over Republicans in the Nov. 3 elections, The Washington Times reported on Wednesday.
“These are suppression polls trying to support their favored Democrat candidates and trying to suppress money, volunteers and donors on GOP campaigns,” veteran pollster Jim McLaughlin said. “Media should be forcing these polls they report on to disclose demographics and weighting.”
The New York Times, which included 15 Wedgewood polls taken from June through October, announced on its website that it had removed Wedgewood from its midterms polling aggregate.
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr warned Wednesday that broadcast networks that air fabricated poll data jeopardize their federal licenses.
Wedgewood’s widely circulated polls mostly covered U.S. Senate races, with some surprising results.
An Oct. 14 poll on the Mississippi U.S. Senate race showed the Republican incumbent, Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, leading her Democrat opponent, Scott Colom, by just 4 percentage points. Colom promoted the survey via email, stating that the race was a dead heat.
The nonpartisan Cook Political Report lists Mississippi’s U.S. Senate seat as “likely Republican.”
Wedgewood’s polling showed leads for Democrat candidates in Kansas, Maine, Texas, Georgia, and Ohio.
In many of the races, the polling widened the leads found in polling from more established polling firms.
Wedgewood admitted to faking the data only after its methods were uncovered by polling aggregator FiftyPlusOne.
Analysts at FiftyPlusOne said they attempted to replicate a Wedgewood poll and found serious discrepancies, which the company said made it “suspicious of Wedgewood’s data and require an explanation.”
FiftyPlusOne confronted Wedgewood with the findings and received a foul-mouthed response.
Late Tuesday, Wedgewood posted a statement admitting its polling data was fabricated and claimed it was all a social experiment.
“Having previously worked in the polling and research sector, we watched as the public’s trust in polling eroded alongside a rise in unverifiable, low-quality methodology. 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?” Wedgewood said.
Many people, including McLaughlin and Carr, are not buying that story.
“I would like to see some attorney general go after these folks for fraud and election interference,” said McLaughlin, who has conducted polling for the Trump campaign.
Carr said in a statement: “During this election season, there has been a significant surge in entirely Fake Polls and Suppression Polls designed to do nothing more than interfere with the regular functioning of the electoral process and alter the normal patterns of voter turnout and enthusiasm.”
