A polling outfit that repeatedly lifted far-left Democratic candidates admitted fabricating its survey numbers as an “experiment,” leaving strategists furious over dried-up donations and wrecked races.
Fox News Digital reported that Wedgewood Polling released a statement Tuesday night conceding it used “fabricated numbers” for what it called an experimental project. The firm said the goal was to show vulnerabilities, lack of oversight, and the low barrier to entry in modern political polling. It insisted the effort “was never intended to sway an election” and framed the admission as a “wake-up call” on data integrity.
Those numbers had already moved money and headlines. Progressive candidates in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Texas saw the data cited by campaigns, aggregators, and national outlets. When the admission landed, Democratic operatives did not treat it as a clever stunt.
Veteran Democratic strategist and former Kamala Harris advisor Mike Nellis told Fox News Digital the people behind it were “absolute scumbags.” He rejected any claim of moral high ground.
"They can try to claim that they have some moral high ground here, but they lied about their polling data, got caught, and are freaking out because they've committed fraud."
Nellis went further, saying those responsible should be run out of American politics and prosecuted to the full extent of the law if possible. He noted the firm had crowdfunded a good chunk of its polls and asked whether the money would be returned.
Michigan offered the clearest damage report. Progressive candidate Abdul El-Sayed, a former state public health official, advanced from the Democratic Senate primary and now faces former Republican Rep. Mike Rogers for the open seat. During the primary fight against state Sen. Mallory McMorrow and U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens, campaigns pointed to Wedgewood figures.
McMorrow said the numbers helped dry up donations and left reporters hounding her to quit. She posted that a point may have been proven about broken polling, but ordinary supporters paid the price.
"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."
Democrat strategist Jennifer Holdsworth, who said she ran a super PAC backing McMorrow, described the practical hit. Donors used the poll to pull funding at a moment the side was already being outspent by $80 million.
The Washington Examiner noted the scandal riled Democrats ahead of the midterms and renewed doubts about blue-wave forecasts just as control of Congress comes into view. McMorrow also posted a blunt warning not to get complacent and not to trust the polls.
Accountability talk is rising in other corners of government too, including new cash rewards aimed at tips that expose fraud. Voters watching primaries get warped by phantom data may wonder why similar urgency is slower to reach the polling industry.
The New York Times removed 15 Wedgewood polls released between June and October once the fabrication admission became public. The paper said the firm had earlier answered questions about pollster identities, sampling methods, contact approaches, weighting, and funding sources during vetting.
Decision Desk HQ pulled 17 Wedgewood polls from its projections yet stated it had not changed projected seat totals or chamber-control probabilities in the Senate or House. Nonpartisan aggregator Political Polls had cited Wedgewood in the Wisconsin gubernatorial picture, showing Democratic state Assembly member Francesca Hong with an edge over Republican Rep. Tom Tiffany before Hong lost the primary to an establishment-backed rival.
The New York Post reported that Wedgewood admitted just one of the 17 polls it published this year was real. After the fakes were stripped out, Nate Silver’s model shifted a bit more favorable to Republicans. The same piece noted the fabricated surveys had been cited by the Times, Silver, Decision Desk HQ, and others before the exposure.
Personnel fights elsewhere show how quickly institutions can clear out problems when they choose to, as when the Supreme Court left a Trump firing of an NLRB member in place. Polling gatekeepers moved slower.
G. Elliott Morris, co-founder of the independent outlet FiftyPlusOne, posted that his group was already investigating Wedgewood for faking data. They had emailed for comment that morning, ahead of publishing findings the next day.
"We were investigating Wedgewood for faking their data and emailed them for comment this morning, ahead of publishing the findings tomorrow. They are trying to cover up their fraud with the 'we were doing a social experiment' excuse."
Former Obama staffer Tommy Vietor called the conduct “lying and fraud.” The pattern was not limited to one race. A July Wedgewood poll showed Texas state Rep. James Talarico leading Attorney General Ken Paxton among Hispanic voters 64 percent to 30 percent. In Nebraska, a GoFundMe under the Wedgewood Polls name sought $5,000 for gubernatorial and Senate polling and raised $500.
Breitbart reported that Wedgewood fabricated data in at least 18 polls that aggregators including FiftyPlusOne, Decision Desk HQ, and the New York Times had cited. The outlet said the fake data helped push McMorrow out of the Michigan Democratic Senate primary after showing her at 9 percent, and that Wedgewood was the second firm this cycle to admit fabricating numbers as a “social experiment,” after Median Strategies. Wedgewood’s own statement asked how easy it was for an entirely fabricated firm to gain traction and answered: far too easy.
House-cleaning inside federal agencies has moved faster in recent months, including lawsuits from ex-FBI staff fired after the Trump documents probe. The polling world still debates whether crowdfunded fake data even warrants repayment.
Not every shop swallowed the numbers. RealClearPolitics explained that it never included the Wedgewood or Median Strategies polls in its averages. RCP director of polling Kavon W. Nikrad said the site keeps a very high standard for inclusion and that this pollster did not begin to meet it. The fake releases had already shaped perceptions in races across Michigan, Maine, Louisiana, and Mississippi before being shut down. Wedgewood’s statement again insisted the project was never meant to sway an election or permanently mislead the public and was designed as a wake-up call.
Republicans, including President Trump, have long heaped doubt on the veracity of polls. The 2016 cycle, when surveys showed Hillary Clinton with a clear edge that never matched the result, still sits in living memory. This episode hands fresh evidence to anyone who argued that brand-new firms with no track record deserve far more scrutiny before their charts drive fundraising and media narratives.
Similar accountability pressure has reached diplomatic posts as well, with a Trump-linked special envoy ousted after a State Department clash. The common thread is simple: when the data or the personnel cannot withstand daylight, the responsible move is to remove them.
Fox News Digital reached out to McMorrow’s state Senate office, Stevens’ campaign, and strategist Lis Smith for further comment. The firm’s admission, the scrubbed aggregator files, and the strategists’ raw anger now sit on the public record as the midterm fight intensifies.
When phantom surveys can dry up real donations and push candidates toward the exits, the media’s rush to amplify every new pollster looks less like journalism and more like malpractice that working voters end up paying for.