A sham polling firm publicly confessed to pumping out fake polls after it was caught fabricating data by election nerds at FiftyPlusOne, which had been poised to publish an investigation. Wedgewood Polls, which released a poll over the summer that Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow blamed for the downfall of her US Senate bid, claimed it released fake data as a social experiment. [snip] “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?” it added. “The short answer: Far too easy.” [snip] She claimed that after that poll was released, donations “dried up,” volunteers for her campaign were dealt a blow to morale, and she faced distracting questions from reporters about when she planned to drop out. McMorrow claimed that a survey from Wedgewood Polls over the summer that showed her support imploding into the single digits was a key part of the reason why she decided to drop out of the race. [snip] “The FCC takes these issues seriously,” he wrote on X. “Broadcasters are prohibited by the terms of their federal licenses from engaging in News Distortion or promoting Broadcast Hoaxes. “It is important that broadcasters comply with their public interest obligations.” Wedgewood Polls boasted that it had tricked key polling aggregators, including The New York Times, FiftyPlusOne, and VoteHub. [snip] “When Wedgewood first appeared, I reached out to their head pollster to try to learn more about them. We spoke on the phone for about 15 minutes,” VoteHub’s head of data science Zachary Donnini posted on X. “He told me he was a college student at Boston University.” “A few years ago, I was a college student following politics as a hobby myself, so I try to give people in that position the benefit of the doubt,” he added. “It’s disappointing to see how this has unfolded, because it’s going to be a hell of a lot harder for the next college kid.” [snip] In August, Median Strategies claimed it had been engaging in a “short-term social experiment.” (*) Full article: https://nypost.com/2026/10/21/us-news/sick-trolls-fess-up-to-making-fake-polls-that-helped-abdul-el-sayed-in-michigan-far-too-easy/ Post navigation Supreme Court blocks Trump’s effort to restrict transgender treatment for prison inmates ‘You will not target my children’: Parents livid over pro-trans mystery mailers addressed to students
