From confession to conspiracy: How the Wedgewood fake polls story spread

2026 Election Rumor Rundown This blog post was written by the Election Rumor Research team at the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public and crossposted on the CIP’s Election Rumor Rundown Substack newsletter. Key Takeaways On Tuesday, Wedgewood Polls released a statement admitting that their polling was fake and justifying it as part of a social experiment to draw attention to low oversight in polling. News of this admission — the second case of “fake polls” this cycle — was quickly amplified and wrapped into a number of different rumors and narratives. Conversation and framing contests around this news continue. Partisan actors across the spectrum have used the revelation to declare that polls were underrepresenting support for their parties and potentially causing voter suppression for their candidates. One risk around this discovery is that the existence of fake polls will fuel distrust in election polling across the political spectrum and could be used to bolster “rigged election” claims after election results are announced. Figure 1: Cumulative graph showing the number of X posts about Wedgewood and “fake polls.” Individual posts are plotted on the curve at the minute they were posted, sized by # of reposts. The graph shows how the narrative gets started in the mid-afternoon (PDT) on October 20, takes off that evening (more detail on the red box in Figure 3 below), before fading down overnight, and then surges again the next day with help from right wing influencers and GOP political elites. https://faculty.washington.edu/kstarbi/SpotlightViz.html Overview On Tuesday, October 20, at 3:19 p.m. PDT, Wedgewood Polls — a small polling firm that had launched in June 2026 — released a statement on X, announcing their polling data was fake. In their statement (Figure 2), they framed their work as a “social experiment” to demonstrate the proliferation of low quality political polls, and called for “major reform” to the polling industry. They also called out specific media outlets (MS NOW) that had reported on their polls and other polling organizations (The New York Times, VoteHub, and FiftyPlusOne) that Wedgewood alleged had included their polls in their polling aggregators. The admission by Wedgewood (whose X account has now been deleted) was allegedly in response to an exposé piece published by forecasting and polling aggregation outlet FiftyPlusOne, who had been posting that they had found inconsistencies in the methods and data used by Wedgewood Polls. This Election Rumor Deep Dive explores the context, major rumors, and implications of the revelation around Wedgewood Polls. Figure 2: A press statement from Wedgewood Polls shared in a since-deleted October 20 X post says their operation is “an experimental project to demonstrate the vulnerabilities, lack of oversight, and overall low barrier to entry in the modern polling industry.” Situating Wedgewood in Broader Conversation of Low Quality or “Fake” Polls This is not the first, nor likely to be the last, case of fake polls being filtered into political conversations. In August, another company called Median Strategies released fake polling data that Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass touted as evidence that her re-election campaign was “gaining momentum.” Once the poll was discovered to be fake, the company released a statement quite similar to the excuse Wedgewood used: the fake poll was allegedly a “social experiment” designed to test how polling information could enter the political conversations without independent verification. Wedgewood and Median Strategies are not the only recent cases. At the time of writing, there have been reports that another polling company, SoCal Strategies, has removed their entire online presence after investigation by FiftyPlusOne. This is notable in part because individuals alleged to be behind Wedgewood Polls claimed prior affiliation with SoCal, suggesting that SoCal may also be a fake pollster. Fake polls have real impact. A state senator in Michigan vying for the U.S. Senate blamed a Wedgewood poll for impacting her ability to raise money, causing her to drop out of the Democratic primary race. As the Brennan Center has noted, fabricated polls have been and can be used to inflate or deflate a party’s perceived strength, and can potentially lay the groundwork for challenging the legitimacy of an unfavorable result. The impacts of fake polls don’t just impact candidates or audience perceptions of election outcomes, they also impact the credibility of news outlets and poll aggregators themselves, potentially undermining the perceived legitimacy of real poll numbers. In the Wedgewood case, The New York Times countered they did not use any of Wedgewood Polls’ data in their own polling and forecasting because they work with a reputable pollster, but had just listed a few of their polls on its tracking pages — not integrating it into their own forecasting averages. Despite this defense, even small amounts of amplification can be used by political opponents to cast doubts on legitimate polling, further sowing distrust about polling and election outcomes more generally. Figure 3: A zoomed-in version of the cumulative graph, featuring the first few hours of conversation. Posts from highlighted accounts (white circles with usernames) are featured in the write-up below. Interactive version of this graph is available here: https://faculty.washington.edu/kstarbi/SpotlightViz.html The Polling Community Makes Sense of the ‘Fake Poll’ Confession Early X conversations around the confession featured several accounts dedicated to conducting or reporting on political polls. At 3:22 p.m. PDT, just three minutes after Wedgewood’s confession, @PollTracker2024 posted a copy of Wedgewood’s statement along with this: “So it turns out Wedgewood polls is just a bogus polling firm.” That post catalyzed a series of reactions from others in the community. Some claimed that they had prior suspicions about Wedgewood. Others voiced anger about what they had done. A few began to examine their reporting alongside other data to speculate about whether their fake polls had impacted other polls or betting markets. Zachary Donnini from the independent forecasting outlet, VoteHub, bemoaned the situation and described on X how he had phoned the allegedly college-aged Wedgewood forecasters earlier in the summer, extending them the benefit of the doubt given many forecasters start as hobbyists. Not long after Wedgewood’s X post and confession, at 4:23 p.m. PDT, G. Elliott Morris, one of the co-founders of FiftyPlusOne, posted to X (Figure 4), quoting Wedgewood’s now deleted X post, about an upcoming story on Wedgewood. Figure 4: A screenshot of G. Elliott Morris’s October 20 X post announcing FiftyPlusOne’s investigation into Wedgewood Polls. Morris’ X post questioned Wedgewood’s “social experiment” excuse. He included a link to FiftyPlusOne’s reporting, which explained how he and his colleagues had, in recent days, been closing in on Wedgewood for manufacturing polling data. The article also noted some of the damage that Wedgewood had done, explaining how its fabricated polling data had been amplified by established media outlets and prominent election forecasters, influencing election reporting and predictions. Right-Wing Influencers Amplify the Controversy Early conversations about Wedgewood and its fake polls were mostly concentrated among polling experts and political wonks. About two hours after the confession, the story began to get a boost from right wing influencers. At 5:29 p.m. PDT @Geiger_Capital, a verified X account with more than 300,000 followers, published the first of two high engagement posts drawing attention to the case. This post went viral, receiving 656,000 views, 4,800 reposts, and 17,000 likes (Figure 5). Figure 5: A screenshot of Geiger Capital’s October 20 X post amplifying Wedgewood Polls’ press release, emphasizing that The New York Times and Nate Silver had posted the fake polls. Geiger Capital’s tweets specifically called out The New York Times and prominent poll expert Nate Silver for allegedly integrating Wedgewood’s data into their own aggregate polling statistics. A follow-up post by Geiger Capital stressed that left-leaning media outlet MS NOW had also amplified the polls. Geiger Capital’s posts promoted a perspective on the story that soon became prominent on the right: that the existence of this fake polling data and its integration into other polling data suggest that the polling industry cannot be trusted. (Interestingly, this echoed the framing from Wedgewood’s confession.) Later, others would extend this framing to suggest that polling numbers, especially those that show Democrats leading Republicans in many U.S. House and Senate races, are not accurate. Shortly after @GeigerCapital’s two posts, an account called @DSA_Watch, picked up the story and alleged in an X post — without evidence — that Wedgewood was “pro Abdul El-Sayed” and that it had falsely inflated his numbers to support his candidacy. About 20 minutes later, right-wing content creator Eric Daugherty, posted the first of two Wedgewood-related messages. This one highlighted recent numbers from the fake polling firm that suggested Democrats were leading in red and purple states, suggesting that these — and perhaps other similar polling numbers — were not trustworthy. Figure 6: A screenshot of an October 20 X post from Eric Daugherty highlighting where “FAKE POLLSTER” Wedgewood Polls had shown Democrats ahead in important midterm races.