The revelation that a new polling firm fabricated survey results sent shock waves through Democratic circles on Wednesday, who are being forced to assess how the bogus data may have influenced the 2026 elections in key races.
Wedgewood Polls admitted in a statement that its polling data, which included several congressional and gubernatorial races this cycle, was entirely fabricated, claiming that it did so under the guise of a “social experiment.”
The statement came after requests for comment from political polling site FiftyPlusOne, which originially uncovered that Wedgewood Polls was fabricating polling data and crowdfunding its purported research.
Wedgewood’s monthslong deception led several media outlets, including the New York Times, and other polling aggregators to incorporate fabricated results into their own polling averages. It also resulted in at least two Democratic candidates campaigning off the fake data.
Jim Kessler, a former staffer for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and executive vice president of policy at the center-left think tank Third Way, told the Washington Examiner that Wedgewood “committed some sort of fraud” with its falsified data.
“It was designed to affect the outcome,” alleged Kessler. “Did it change the outcome? I don’t know, but it affected it. It affected the race. That’s why you do it. They weren’t doing this for a practical joke. This wasn’t trick or treat.”
Mississippi Senate Democratic nominee Scott Colom touted a now-retracted article from Newsweek that cited the Wedgewood poll, which was posted on Oct. 14 and showed him within striking distance of Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS). Colom’s campaign told the Washington Examiner that the Democratic nominee had no part in commissioning, funding, conducting, or releasing the Wedgewood survey and that the campaign only referenced it as a public poll.
In the days after the post from Wedgewood, the Senate Majority PAC, aligned with Schumer, invested $1.2 million in the race. The investment comes as Colom was already outspending Hyde-Smith by about $4.6 million to $3.2 million, according to the Associated Press. Colom also raised more money in the third quarter than Hyde-Smith, having raised $1,539,820 compared to Hyde-Smith’s $687,486.
Gerard Henderson, Colom’s campaign manager, stressed that Colom has the “momentum to win” the Mississippi race, citing two national forecasters, the Cook Political Report and Sabato’s Crystal Ball, moving the race in favor of the Democrat last week and the national investment in the contest.
“[Hyde-Smith] knows Mississippians are ready to pick another senator and that Scott has the momentum to win,” Henderson said.
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee denied making any decisions based on Wedgewood’s polling after speculation surfaced over the group’s investment in Mississippi’s Senate race just six days after the firm’s poll showed Colom leading Hyde-Smith.
“Absolutely not,” DSCC spokeswoman Lauren French said in a post on X. “We don’t make spending or strategic decisions based on external polling.”
Michigan Senate nominee Abdul el Sayed highlighted polling from Wedgewood posted on June 28 showing him being the only Democratic candidate leading Republican Mike Rogers in a July 3 fundraising email as a way to boost his electability credentials, as he faced questions about whether his progressive brand could win in Michigan.
The false polling data from Wedgewood Polls consistently favored Democrats, particularly progressive candidates. In Michigan, the fake polling firm’s polling data claimed now-Democratic nominee el Sayed was leading both Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI) and state Sen. Mallory McMorrow. In the falsified data, McMorrow is shown as only having 9% of voters’ support.
McMorrow ended her Senate campaign on July 5. Following the revelation that Wedgewood’s polling information was fake, McMorrow claimed that as a result of the “experiment,” donations “dried up,” volunteers for her campaign were “devastated,” and she was hounded by calls to drop out of the race by the media.
“I hope Democrats are ready to blow up the system with campaign finance and transparency reforms,” McMorrow said. “Trust is already at an all-time low. We don’t get out of this mess without rebuilding trust.”
She continued, “And media – who loves to ride the drama of a pollercoaster – needs to take a hard look at what’s legitimate and what’s not. If this teaches us anything – DON’T GET COMPLACENT AND DON’T TRUST THE POLLS.”
Democratic strategist Jennifer Holdsworth, who ran a super PAC supporting McMorrow, claimed that Wedgewood’s poll was “used by several donors to pull back funding at a time we were being outspent by $80 million.”
Kessler told the Washington Examiner that while Wedgewood’s data may not have affected spending decisions from campaign organizations, the polling data generated news coverage and affected the races by “dragging down the average for one candidate and inflating the average for another candidate in terms of their standing with the public.”
“They created, very inexpensively, a false data story that the media picked up and covered breathlessly, and that all the mainstream media outlets put it on their polling aggregators, which you know, in the world of political campaigns, fundraising, getting more support, getting volunteers, getting people to show up at your rallies — those things matter,” Kessler said.
In Wisconsin, Wedgewood Polls posted data in early July showing state Rep. Francesca Hong, a socialist, leading the Democratic field for governor.
The firm then posted data on July 21 showing Hong expanding her lead by 8 points, with her closest opponent being former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes and Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley at just 9%.
Hong ultimately lost the primary election to Crowley by less than a percentage point following Barnes’s withdrawal from the race at the eleventh hour. Democratic strategist Brad Bannon dismissed the potential impact the false polling could have had on the 2026 elections, saying that if it had, Hong would have won the governor’s race in Wisconsin.
WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT WHO’S BEHIND THE FAKE POLLING OPERATION WEDGEWOOD POLLS
“I think there’s a big potential problem here with this sorry episode, and it’s Gresham’s law of public opinion: fake polling drives out reliable polling,” Bannon said. “And I just think it gives the whole industry a bad name.”
“If this catches on, where you have fake firms releasing polls just to get themselves, you know, in the new political newsletters, it could potentially drive out pollsters who take a lot of time and trouble to do their jobs correctly and accurately,” Bannon warned. “So I think it’s a very bad trend, and it could produce dangerous results.”