A Leftist Pollster Got Busted Feeding Democrats Rosy Numbers in Red States and It Could Torpedo Their Midterms

Ann Selzer's final Iowa poll handed Kamala Harris a three-point lead in a state Trump carried by thirteen.

Then a polling outfit nobody had ever heard of started showing Democrats surging in Texas, Kansas and Ohio.

Now that firm has been caught, and the excuse it posted online is somehow worse than the crime.

The Polls Behind the Democrat Surge Fell Apart Under One Test

The outfit called itself Wedgewood Polling, and from June on its surveys landed on the most trusted scorecards in American politics.

Its polls handed Democrats multipoint leads in battleground races in Texas, Georgia, Ohio, Kansas, Maine and Michigan, according to Just the News.

One July survey had Democrat James Talarico crushing Ken Paxton among Texas Hispanics, 64 percent to 30 percent.

Another made Mississippi's Senate race look closer than it really was.

In Wisconsin, an aggregator ran a Wedgewood number putting far-left Democrat Francesca Hong ahead of Republican Tom Tiffany for governor.

Hong never even survived her primary.

Wedgewood says its numbers also touched races in Iowa and Nebraska.

The New York Times bought it and later pulled 15 Wedgewood polls from its tracking.

Decision Desk HQ yanked 17 more.

The Times says it questioned Wedgewood about who its pollsters were and got answers it accepted.

By the firm's account, exactly one of its polls was real – a survey in Nebraska.

Then analysts at FiftyPlusOne tried to replicate the Mississippi poll, and the numbers didn't hold up.

When they confronted the firm, they got a profane response.

On the night of October 20, Wedgewood came clean on X and admitted its numbers were fabricated.

That post has since been deleted.

Wedgewood Says Its Fake Polls Were an Experimental Project

The firm's excuse is that the whole thing was a test.

Wedgewood claimed it set out to learn whether a pollster built from thin air could fool reporters and poll aggregators.

"The short answer: Far too easy," the firm wrote.

It swore the scheme "was never intended to sway an election."

The donors who chipped in might disagree.

Wedgewood ran a GoFundMe for Nebraska polling and pulled in $500 toward a $5,000 goal.

Democrats only got angry once the con knocked Michigan Democrat Mallory McMorrow out of her Senate primary.

Longtime Democrat operative Neera Tanden admitted it: "And a lot of smart people fell for the op."

Wedgewood isn't even the first.

In August, a firm called Median Strategies pushed fake polls on the Los Angeles mayor's race, the Nevada governor's race and the Wisconsin Democrat primary for governor, then hid behind the same social experiment line.

In 2010, Daily Kos sued the pollster it was paying, Research 2000, after analysts concluded the numbers looked cooked.

The left keeps falling for fake polls because fake polls keep telling the left what it wants to hear.

Brendan Carr Warned About Fake Polls Before Wedgewood Got Caught

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr saw this coming.

In early September, weeks before Wedgewood confessed, Carr told Fox News broadcasters should avoid "airing fake polls, particularly if they're done to suppress people."

On October 21, he went further.

This time he pointed to the FCC's news distortion policy and its broadcast hoax rule.

He made clear that a station's federal license could be at stake.

Carr didn't name any pollster.

He didn't need to.

That's a much bigger stick than an embarrassing correction on page A17.

Fake Leads in Red States Are Built to Keep Republicans Home

A poll showing a Democrat ahead in Texas doesn't just report the race – it tries to change it.

Trump carried Texas by almost 14 points in 2024, and a fake poll showing Hispanic voters fleeing Ken Paxton tells Republicans that ground is slipping away.

It tells Democrat strategists to stop writing off a state they haven't won statewide since 1994.

Republicans who see a lost cause stay home.

Democrat donors who smell blood start writing checks.

Reporters start writing the blue wave story, and the next round of polls gets measured against it.

That is how a suppression poll works, and it is exactly what Carr warned about.

Ann Selzer quit election polling after her Iowa disaster, and Trump took her to court.

Wedgewood got caught by a handful of number crunchers who bothered to check the math.

The New York Times asked a few questions and waved it through.

That is the same newsroom that tells Republicans to trust the experts.

Any Republican who sees a red-state poll with a Democrat surging before November 3 should remember the name Wedgewood – and vote anyway.

Sources:

• Kevin Killough, "Fake polling firm that publicized bogus polls favoring Dems, claims it was an 'experimental project'," Just the News, October 22, 2026.
• Elizabeth Elkind, "Wedgewood Polling admits fabricating data as Democrats erupt," Fox News, October 21, 2026.
• Matt Mercer, "Polling Firm Admits to Fake Data, Says It Was 'Social Experiment'," Breitbart, October 21, 2026.
• W. James Antle III, "New fake polling scandal riles Democrats ahead of midterm elections," Washington Examiner, October 21, 2026.
• Madison Colombo, "FCC considering action on broadcast networks over biased coverage, fake polls," Fox News, September 7, 2026.