WASHINGTON — Trolls caused a poll lot of trouble.
A sham polling firm publicly confessed to pumping out fake polls after it was caught fabricating data by election nerds at FiftyPlusOne, which had been poised to publish an investigation.
Wedgewood Polls, which released a poll over the summer that Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow blamed for the downfall of her US Senate bid, claimed it released fake data as a social experiment.
“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 group said in a statement posted to X.
“We wanted to test a simple hypothesis: How easy is it for an entirely fabricated polling firm to gain traction, be taken seriously, and expose how little scrutinization exists in media and public commentary?” it added.
“The short answer: Far too easy.”
McMorrow claimed that a survey from Wedgewood Polls over the summer that showed her support imploding into the single digits was a key part of the reason why she decided to drop out of the race.
At the time, the Democratic Michigan Senate primary had been a three-way contest between McMorrow, Abdul El-Sayed and Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.)
She claimed that after that poll was released, donations “dried up,” volunteers for her campaign were dealt a blow to morale, and she faced distracting questions from reporters about when she planned to drop out.
“Sure, a point was proven,” McMorrow said after the revelation. “Polling is broken. But tens of thousands of people poured their hearts, time, energy, hard-earned money into something they believed in — for a year-and-a-half, and it was treated like a game.”
“Our volunteers gave their all. And then some. I felt like I had let so many of them down.”
Recently, a survey from Wedgewood Polls caused a stir by claiming that Mississippi Democratic Senate hopeful Scott Colom was dead even with incumbent Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.).
The Democrats’ Senate Majority PAC announced this week that it is pumping another $1.2 million behind Colom.
But spokesperson Lauren French told The Post that the super PAC “absolutely” did not rely on that poll for its decision.
“We don’t make spending or strategic decisions based on external polling,” French said.
Wedgewood Polls said its goal was “never intended to sway an election or permanently mislead the public.” It claimed that it conducted one legitimate poll in Nebraska.
“[I]t was designed as a wake-up call,” the group said.
“If a fictional entity run by a small group of industry veterans can be integrated into major polling averages and cited by major news organizations, the standards for how polling data is vetted, aggregated, and reported must change.”
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr put broadcasters on blast over the revelations and warned them against failing to vet fake polls.
“The FCC takes these issues seriously,” he wrote on X. “Broadcasters are prohibited by the terms of their federal licenses from engaging in News Distortion or promoting Broadcast Hoaxes.
“It is important that broadcasters comply with their public interest obligations.”
Wedgewood Polls boasted that it had tricked key polling aggregators, including The New York Times, FiftyPlusOne, and VoteHub.
“When Wedgewood first appeared, I reached out to their head pollster to try to learn more about them. We spoke on the phone for about 15 minutes,” VoteHub’s head of data science Zachary Donnini posted on X. “He told me he was a college student at Boston University.”
“A few years ago, I was a college student following politics as a hobby myself, so I try to give people in that position the benefit of the doubt,” he added. “It’s disappointing to see how this has unfolded, because it’s going to be a hell of a lot harder for the next college kid.”
The revelations about Wedgewood Polls come months after Median Strategies got caught faking surveys in the Los Angeles mayoral and Wisconsin gubernatorial primaries.
In August, Median Strategies claimed it had been engaging in a “short-term social experiment.”
