With less than two weeks to go before the November election, Americans who have scoffed at political polling since Donald Trump entered politics a decade ago have one more reason to be skeptical.
For the second time in the 2026 midterm election cycle, a “polling” company has publicly admitted to fabricating data about voter preferences.
And major media outlets and big-name polling operations had bought into it.
Wedgewood Polling, a supposed startup in the polling industry, has been cited by outlets like The New York Times, Newsweek, DecisionDesk and The Hill, Newsweek reported Wednesday.
Nate Silver, probably the country’s best known individual polling personality, also used Wedgwood data. In a post on the social media platform X Wednesday, he wrote that Wedgewood’s numbers have been deleted from his database.
He also wrote that Wedgewood’s “results” showed a consistent, if small, bias in favor of the Democratic Party.
We removed Wedgewood “polls” from our database, will write more about that tonight/tomorrow. These polls tended to be ~1 point more favorable for Ds than the consensus. Biggest change in MI (El-Sayed goes from +3.6 to +3.0) but that also reflects the Marist AES +2 being added.
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) October 21, 2026
“We removed Wedgewood ‘polls’ from our database, will write more about that tonight/tomorrow. These polls tended to be ~1 point more favorable for Ds than the consensus,” Silver wrote.
Whatever the size of the skewing, Wedgewood’s admission Tuesday that it was a fake operation rippled through the country’s political journalism community.
Silver, for instance, changed his forecast for Michigan’s hot Senate race slightly to reduce the estimated lead of Democratic candidate Abdul El-Sayed, according to Newsweek. He also adjusted Maine’s Senate race slightly, because the fake data had affected the favorability of both incumbent Republican Sen. Susan Collins and Democratic challenger Troy Jackson, Newsweek reported.
The New York Times also removed Wedgewood data and published an editor’s note that appeared to try to downplay the incident, stating that it had performed “vetting” on Wedgewood similar to other polling trackers. It also made a point of noting that it didn’t include Wedgewood numbers in “the tracker or average of President Trump’s approval rating or of the national polls tracking overall preference for control of Congress.”
Wedgewood Polling’s admission came in a post on X Tuesday night, which came after the polling website FiftyPlusOne contacted Wedgewood for an article concerning its suspicions about the company’s data.
In a report published Tuesday night, FiftyPlusOne indicated Wedgewood’s admission was a direct response to the fact that its hoax was about to be revealed publicly.
(Wedgewood responded to FiftyPlusOne’s queries with an expletive, FiftyPlusOne reported.)
However, in its official response post, Wedgwood claimed that it manufactured and published the fabricated data as part of “an experimental project to demonstrate the vulnerabilities, lack of oversight, and overall low barrier to entry in the modern political polling industry.”
The polling industry needs major reform. Our statement below: https://t.co/Sj8JLYgply
— Wedgewood Polls (@WedgewoodPolls) October 20, 2026
“We wanted to test a simple hypothesis: How easy is it for an entirely fabricated polling firm to gain traction, to be taken seriously, and expose how little scrutinization exists in media and public commentary?
“The short answer: Far too easy.”
For Americans who follow politics, this all might sound familiar.
In August, a hoax polling firm called Median Strategies admitted to the Los Angeles Times that it had fabricated its numbers.
Like the Wedgewood data, Median Strategies’ results favored leftist candidates — such as Francesca Hong, the Democratic Socialists of America candidate for the Democratic nomination in Wisconsin’s gubernatorial race. (Hong was widely believed to hold a commanding lead in the race, but ended up losing narrowly to Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley.)
And like Wedgewood, Median Strategies claimed it was an operation to prove how faulty the nation’s polling system is.
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“Median Strategies was created as a short term social experiment to examine how purported polling information could enter and spread through the political information ecosystem without independent verification,” the company told the Los Angeles Times.
In an X post, House Speaker Mike Johnson called the Wedgewood revelations “new evidence” of the kind of bias conservatives are facing going into the midterm elections — and sounded a call to arms for Republican voters.
I’ve been sounding the alarms that the polls are WRONG—and new evidence of that is now piling up! Polling organizations are being forced to admit they are dramatically under-sampling Republican support, but the media is delighted to use it all to depress GOP turnout. We can’t let that happen! Today, the Wedgewood scandal—where they’ve admitted it was “far too easy” to produce and spread completely fake polling data—adds an even darker element with enormous implications. **IGNORE THE POLLS, and GO VOTE! 🇺🇸🇺🇸 We have 13 days to SAVE AMERICA!**
— Mike Johnson (@MikeJohnson) October 21, 2026
“Polling organizations are being forced to admit they are dramatically under-sampling Republican support, but the media is delighted to use it all to depress GOP turnout. We can’t let that happen!” he wrote.
“Today, the Wedgewood scandal — where they’ve admitted it was ‘far too easy’ to produce and spread completely fake polling data — adds an even darker element with enormous implications.
“**IGNORE THE POLLS, and GO VOTE!” he concluded. “We have 13 days to SAVE AMERICA!**”
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