2nd Polling Firm Admits to Fake Data, Says It Was ‘Social Experiment’
Are polls to ratings what sex is to advertising?
NEWSFEATURED
10/21/20262 min read
Why it matters: Two weeks before the midterms, a second “polling firm” admits its numbers were invented. The real pollsters don’t have a great track record either.
The big picture: Wedgewood Polls admitted on X Tuesday night that it fabricated its data all cycle and called it a “social experiment.” It follows Median Strategies, which pulled the same stunt in Wisconsin, Nevada, and Los Angeles in August. Wedgewood had no staff names, no phone number, no address, and a free Google Sites page. Naturally, it made the New York Times.
By the numbers:
18: Fake Wedgewood polls this year, picked up by FiftyPlusOne, Decision Desk HQ, and the New York Times.
9%: The fake number Wedgewood gave Mallory McMorrow before she quit Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary.
16 points: Ann Selzer’s 2024 Iowa miss. Her final poll had Harris up 3. Trump won by 13.
3.1, 4.6, 2.7: Points by which polls underestimated Republicans in 2016, 2020, and 2024.
What they’re saying:
Wedgewood, on fooling everyone: “Far too easy.”
CNN’s Harry Enten, on what a 2 to 4 point GOP polling miss would do to the Democrats’ map: “adios, amigos, sayonara.”
The other side: Pollsters say every poll is a snapshot, not a prediction, and that fraud shouldn’t be confused with legitimate polling. But Selzer was the gold standard, rated A+ by Nate Silver, and she said she did nothing differently in 2024 than in 2016 and 2020. She retired defending her integrity. The gold standard missed by 16, and the fakes blended right in.
The bottom line: Polls don’t just measure a race, they steer it. McMorrow says the fake poll dried up her donations. Selzer herself suggested her bad poll may have fired up Republicans. And polls sell. The betting app Novig put a nearly nude Sydney Sweeney on a Times Square billboard because controversy buys attention, and its CEO said as much. A shocking poll does the same job for cable news, in a business where the incentive to grab attention is high and a junk poll costs next to nothing.
THE FAITH CHECK: Israel ran a poll once. Ten of twelve spies brought back a bad report, and the whole nation wept all night and begged to go back to Egypt (Numbers 13–14). Joshua and Caleb lost that vote two to ten, and they were right, because they measured the land by God’s promise instead of the crowd’s fear. That’s the power of a poll: it doesn’t change the facts, it changes your heart. Public opinion doesn’t get to shape a Christian’s convictions; our convictions are supposed to shape public opinion.
Your vote is how you can love your neighbor with policies that are most aligned to God's best.
You should probably know: Texas. Democrat James Talarico leads Ken Paxton by about 2 points in the RealClearPolitics average, well inside the margin. One poll has only 88% of Republicans committed to Paxton. If polls miss Republicans the way they have before, that race is a coin flip, and the number that matters most is the one telling a lukewarm Republican his vote won’t count.
Original reporting by Breitbart News.
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