A day or two ago, a political polling company named Wedgewood Polls admitted that its election data was entirely fake. The company posted a statement online explaining that it made up its numbers to see if anyone would notice. This trick worked completely. Major news organizations and polling websites such as The New York Times, VoteHub, and FiftyPlusOne put the fake data directly into their tracking systems without first checking it.
This was not a harmless prank. It had serious results for real people. In Michigan, state Sen. Mallory McMorrow dropped out of a close U.S. Senate race on July 5 because a fake June poll showed her support dropping to single digits. After the poll came out, her campaign donations stopped, and her volunteers panicked. Her campaign ended because of numbers that did not exist. For more on how this data directly dismantled her bid, you can read the comprehensive report from Newsweek.
The organizations that run these polling websites are trying to defend themselves. They argue that their tracking systems are still safe. Voters should reject these arguments. First, these websites note that data analysts at FiftyPlusOne eventually found the fraud and exposed it on Oct. 20. But finding a problem in late October does not fix the damage done over the summer. The fake polls already changed who was running in the election and where donors spent their money. Finding the truth months later is too late to fix the primary results.
Second, tracking experts claim that a few fake polls will not change the overall average of all polls combined. However, the data tracking site Decision Desk HQ had to remove 17 separate fake polls from its system. When a large amount of made-up information gets added to political models, the final average becomes inaccurate.
The public data models create an unearned sense of absolute certainty about elections. Mainstream forecasters claim a massive Democratic “blue wave” is coming based on these data points, while party strategists point to a Republican “firewall” as a guaranteed win. This new scandal proves that both sides are relying on a flawed foundation. These models are not objective data. They become tools that push voters toward specific candidates by creating a false sense of who is winning.
The news media make this problem worse because television networks need continuous content. News companies want dramatic updates so quickly that they stop checking if their sources are real. An unverified account can post a chart online, and TV networks will broadcast it as fact hours later. Following the exposure of the fraud, news outlets that previously cited the fake data had to retract or correct their coverage. Multiple national publications were forced to clean up their archives.
This is a widespread issue in politics this year. Over the summer, The New York Times reported that a company named Median Strategies also published fake election numbers. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass shared those fake numbers because they showed her winning her race. When data match what a politician or a news network wants to believe, they stop checking the facts. Details on how this baseline ecosystem was exposed can be found in the Associated Press coverage.
Now, a third entity called SoCal Strategies has sent further shockwaves through the industry. Following the exposure of Wedgewood and Median, data trackers at FiftyPlusOne officially stopped tracking SoCal Strategies due to severe authenticity concerns. Almost immediately after being scrutinized, the entire operation vanished — deleting its website, its X account, and its Substack overnight. Investigators have since discovered a direct trail linking the operations, revealing that the same bad actors behind Wedgewood Polls previously claimed they were operating under the SoCal Strategies banner. The full extent of this disappearing act is laid out in the tracking analysis published by The Washington Post.
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This fraud also involves money. Reports show that Wedgewood Polls took crowdfunding money from ordinary citizens to pay for these fake surveys. The real victims are the thousands of voters who gave their time, energy, and money to political campaigns, only to see their efforts ruined by false data. Polling is no longer just measuring what people think. It is being used to manipulate donors and discourage voters.
As citizens prepare to vote on Nov. 3, they must doubt the percentages they see on television. Media election models are not always correct. Until the political and media industries establish strict rules to verify data before publication, voters should ignore the models. Your vote is real. The polling is not.
Eric Wargotz is a practicing physician, geopolitical analyst, and multisector policy writer whose commentary has appeared in the Washington Examiner, the Baltimore Sun, and the Jerusalem Post. He is a judge and the 178th president of MedChi, the Maryland State Medical Society, following a career that includes serving as a Senate nominee and elected county commission president. A clinical professor emeritus at The George Washington University, his views are his own and do not represent his affiliates.