It was just a polling experiment, bro · ↗ blog.fiftyplusone.news

Another fake pollster gets outed

Oct 21, 2026 · 1 min read

In August, I wrote about the exposé of fake pollster Median Strategies. Yesterday, the team over at poll aggregator FiftyPlusOne exposed yet another fake pollster: Wedgewood Polls. Their suspicions were confirmed after receiving raw data from the firm that had both statistical issues and methodological issues related to the polling platform they claimed to have used (they paid to run an actual poll on said platform as part of their investigation).

Unlike Median Strategies, polls from Wedgewood did make it into several major polling aggregators, including FiftyPlusOne and The New York Times.

Shortly after being contacted by FiftyPlusOne, the fake pollster posted the following statement to Twitter:

Image of a press statement from Wedgewood Polling, featuring the organization’s gazebo logo and the slogan “Your Voice. Our Mission.” Headlined “Wedgewood Polling Public Statement,” the document describes an experiment intended to expose weaknesses in the political polling industry. It claims that the organization published mostly fabricated polling data, which was subsequently accepted by major polling aggregators and cited by national media outlets. The statement names The New York Times, FiftyPlusOne, VoteHub, and MS NOW, and says that one legitimate, crowdfunded Nebraska poll was conducted as an exception. The document concludes by calling for stronger verification standards, greater media literacy, and increased accountability in political polling and reporting.

Essentially, they gave the “it was just a prank, bro” defence once they got caught. I’m not sure that’s going to hold up given that they collected money from donors to conduct crowd-funded polls.

The biggest danger here is that the polling world keeps handing more and more ammunition to the rabble who says it’s all fake. Every fake poll that makes its way into a major aggregator makes the real ones that much harder to defend.

Hat tip to Andrew Gelman.