Fake polls shake US elections: a crisis of trust ahead of the midterms

Fabricated political polling has forced its way into the spotlight during the midterm election period in the United States. Revelations that a small number of fraudulent firms have released fictitious results — some of which were picked up by news outlets and polling trackers — have raised concerns about how easily false information can acquire credibility. Those datasets can be used to cast doubt on the electoral process. And when bad actors are unmasked, their existence can be leveraged to undermine voter confidence in election information overall.

The latest example occurred earlier this month, when Wedgewood Polls released a statement on social media admitting its statistics about a bevy of battleground states — like Texas, Ohio, Michigan, Kansas and Maine — were fake. Wedgewood described its work as "an experimental project" designed to highlight the "vulnerabilities, lack of oversight and overall low barrier to entry" in the US polling industry.

"Having previously worked in the polling and research sector, we watched as the public's trust in polling eroded alongside a rise in unverified, low-quality methodology," the firm said in a statement posted to its social media account, which has now been deleted. It justified its false data as a test to see how easy it would be for fabricated polling to gain traction among voters and the media. "The short answer: Far too easy," Wedgewood said. But Wedgewood's admission came after its surveys had already circulated through the political information ecosystem, reaching prominent media outlets like The New York Times.

The incident was the second such scandal in the 2026 election cycle, following the exposure of another operation, Median Strategies, which acknowledged in August it had also faked results as a "short-term social experiment".

Wedgewood, which launched in June, published surveys covering competitive races across several states. Its results attracted attention from political campaigns, commentators and organisations that compile polling data. The New York Times said its polling tracker had listed 15 Wedgewood surveys between June and October. The newspaper subsequently removed them. In the wake of the scandal, it explained that the firm had answered questions about its personnel, methodology and funding before its results were included. While the Times said Wedgewood's surveys were not incorporated into the newspaper's own presidential approval or national congressional polling averages, the case revealed a vulnerability in the process by which polling information becomes established as credible.

Polling aggregators help journalists and voters make sense of a crowded field of surveys by collecting results from multiple research organisations. Their value depends partly on their ability to distinguish reliable research from poorly conducted or fraudulent work. Wedgewood's success in passing some of those checks suggests that transparency on paper is not necessarily proof that research has been conducted as claimed. According to FiftyPlusOne, a polling and forecasting website that investigated the firm, inconsistencies in the raw data and the technical identifiers associated with survey responses helped raise suspicions about its authenticity. The investigation prompted Wedgewood to acknowledge that most of its results were fabricated.

Though Wedgewood has denied trying to mislead the public, some pollsters are not convinced, suggesting the group could be up to something more nefarious. "We were investigating Wedgewood for faking their data," said data journalist G Elliott Morris, who was involved in FiftyPlusOne's probe. "They are trying to cover up for their fraud with the 'we were doing a social experiment' excuse."

The consequences of fake polling extend far beyond the polling industry. Mallory McMorrow, who ran unsuccessfully in Michigan's Democratic Senate primary, has argued that a Wedgewood survey showing her support in the single digits damaged her campaign. McMorrow said the poll left her volunteers demoralised, and journalists repeatedly contacted her to ask whether she should abandon the race. Donations, she added, also evaporated, with Democratic supporters looking to other campaigns to invest. In a social media post, McMorrow described the poll from Wedgewood — and another from the firm Mitchell Research and Communications — as a "one-two punch" that "killed her campaign". She suspended her Senate bid in July. "By that point, we took a risk and we spend our money. We put our ads up. They were working. But the damage was done. And I was drowned out by outside spending and the narrative that we had completely collapsed," she wrote. Experts say McMorrow's account illustrates a broader problem: even when a poll does not accurately measure public opinion, its findings can still influence the decisions of people who believe it does.

Researchers at the University of Washington's Center for an Informed Public tracked how discussion of Wedgewood's admission spread across social media. Initially, much of the conversation was concentrated among polling experts and people who followed election data. But the story subsequently gained traction among influential political commentators and partisan accounts. Some posts focused on the fact that prominent outlets and polling aggregators had listed Wedgewood's results. Others used the revelation to question polling more broadly, particularly surveys suggesting that Democrats were competitive in closely contested races. The researchers found the controversy became intertwined with claims that polling was systematically misleading voters or understating support for particular political parties. "Within 24 hours, the right-wing media ecosystem had succeeded in drawing attention to the story and setting some of the most salient frames: that poll numbers around the midterms, especially poll numbers favoring Democrats, cannot be trusted," the Center for an Informed Public wrote in its analysis.

President Donald Trump, who has regularly made false claims about US election integrity, seized on the revelations to criticise the Times for including Wedgewood's surveys in its polling tracker. "The New York Times got caught," Trump wrote in a Truth Social post. "Everything about The Failing New York Times is 'ARTIFICIAL'." He also suggested the Wedgewood case would help his $15bn defamation suit against the Times. "Our powerful Lawsuit against them is getting stronger and stronger everyday," he added.

No laws exist in the US that criminalise fake polls outright. Some advocacy groups and law scholars have argued that the publication of fake polls constitutes commodities and wire fraud, warranting federal prosecution. Brendan Carr, the head of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which regulates broadcasts in the US, said there has been "a significant surge" in fake polls during the 2026 midterms, urging networks not to amplify them; otherwise, Carr said, they could lose their licence to operate. "Broadcasters are prohibited by the terms of their federal licenses from engaging in News Distortion or promoting Broadcast Hoaxes," Carr wrote on social media. "It is important that broadcasters comply with their public interest obligations." But the FCC's sole Democratic commissioner, Anna Gomez, disagreed with Carr's assessment. "Pollsters who intentionally mislead the public should answer for it, but broadcasters who report publicly available polling data should never be punished when a poll is wrong," she wrote on X. "FCC rules on news distortion or hoaxes do not apply to a station that reports this data in good faith." Without a clear legal remedy against fake polls, experts argue the onus is placed on media outlets and voters themselves to evaluate the quality of the election data they see. Mark Baldassare, the survey director of the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC), said there are ways to quickly spot which surveys are real — and which are not — advising people to look for transparency.