Fake Polls Epidemic Leaves Midterm Outcome in Doubt

Based on the polls alone, Republicans are headed for a historic defeat in the midterm elections as Democrats are poised to cruise to big majorities in the U.S. House and likely the U.S. Senate. But a series of major scandals involving completely fabricated polling numbers means that the outcome on November 3 is anything but certain.

Most recently, in a story that rocked the polling industry, the group “Wedgewood Polls” admitted on October 20 that it had completely fabricated polling data after the election-analysis website FiftyPlusOne investigated its work. As Axios reported, Wedgewood had previously “got past the BS detectors,” and its results had been included in various polling aggregates, including for The New York Times.

Geiger Capital

@Geiger_Capital

·Follow

Absolutely incredible… "Wedgewood Polls" just admitted they are a fake polling firm and made up their polls. Their fake polls have been posted in both the NYT and Nate Silver’s averages.

8:29 PM · Oct 20, 2026

17.4K

Reply

Copy link

Read 450 replies

After the fraud was exposed, Wedgewood claimed that the deception was a “social experiment” designed to expose weaknesses in the polling industry. But readers had been presented with the invented numbers as if they were verified fact, and the scandal was only uncovered due to an intensive investigation from the polling group FiftyPlusOne.

The fallout from that investigation soon extended to another firm, SoCal Strategies. Another ongoing investigation has now also raised questions about SoCal’s personnel, connections to Wedgewood, and polling data. SoCal’s online presence suddenly disappeared amid the scrutiny.

Those revelations followed an August controversy involving The Public Sentiment Institute, or TPSI, in Florida’s Republican primary for governor. According to FiftyPlusOne, TPSI shifted responses favoring candidate Jay Collins toward rival James Fishback because the initial results did not match its expectations. Fishback’s campaign had paid for polling, a relationship the releases did not disclose.

Put plainly, the accusation was that the pollster adjusted its findings to make its paying client look more popular than voters’ answers indicated – yet still passed off the results to the media as legitimate. TPSI acknowledged a faulty adjustment but denied fabricating or altering the underlying responses.

In addition to misleading the public, manipulating polling data can have a tangible effect on the outcome of races. Candidates who are able to make themselves look more popular than they actually are able to sell themselves as a better investment to donors – perhaps enabling them to buy more ads, distribute more campaign materials, and ultimately win more votes.

Around the same time as the TPSI scandal, an outfit called Median Strategies admitted that its election polls were effectively made up. The firm’s supposed findings covered races in Wisconsin, Nevada, and Los Angeles, where Mayor Karen Bass’s campaign shared favorable numbers from the agency.

Like Wedgewood, Median called its deception a “social experiment” once the fraud was exposed. Yet the public had been given supposed measurements of voter opinion without actual survey responses behind them.

These stories matter because an individual poll can influence much more than a single headline. Polling “aggregators” – services that collect surveys from different firms – combine results to estimate where a race stands. Those averages can then help inform election forecasts and even influence voter enthusiasm. Republican or Democrat voters who feel that an election is out of reach might not bother even showing up to vote at all.

Combining honest surveys can smooth out the imperfections in any one poll. But when fabricated results enter the calculation, invented opinions can influence the average and acquire the appearance of independent confirmation. Readers may see several polls pointing in the same direction without realizing that some of those measurements never actually happened.

Even when data isn’t completely made up, there is still serious reason to doubt poll results. Survey response rates have been in steep decline for years, meaning that many polling samples simply are not representative of the population they are trying to measure.

Moreover, as AMAC Newsline has previously reported, pollsters have increasingly justified “adjusting” their raw poll numbers to reduce their margin of error – meaning that they manually change the results according to segments of the population that the pollster believes, for one reason or another, are over- or under-represented in their sample. But this method creates multiple levels of assumptions that seriously jeopardize the reliability of the poll.

These major polling scandals also come amid a backdrop of huge polling misses in primary elections this year, raising even more questions about whether the country may be headed for a huge surprise on Election Day. In Michigan, polls showed eventual Democrat Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed with a double-digit lead over establishment pick Haley Stevens heading into primary day. El-Sayed ultimately won by one point. In Wisconsin, far-left progressive Francesca Hong lost the Democrat nomination for governor after polls showed her with a 20-point lead.

Of course, the polls also severely underestimated support for President Donald Trump all three times he ran for the Oval Office and have routinely undermeasured GOP support in U.S. House and Senate races.

It may be that Democrats are headed for major victories next week. But if that is indeed the case, the evidence suggests the polls would be lucky rather than accurate.

More importantly, seemingly dismal polls are hardly a reason for Republicans to stay home. If anything, they should be encouragement to get out and vote.