What we know about who’s behind the fake polling operation Wedgewood Polls

Who exactly was running Wedgewood Polls, an admittedly fraudulent polling firm whose data have appeared over the past four months on the polling sites of some of the country’s top aggregators, and why they pursued the project remains one of the biggest mysteries in Washington just weeks before the midterm elections.Several reports say the operation was run by career pollsters claiming to be from both sides of the political aisle while another polling aggregator, drawn into publishing the skewed survey results, disclosed that it was told college students with scant professional experience founded Wedgewood as a grassroots project.A firestorm over the firm’s true identity began this week after an investigation conducted by FiftyPlusOne, a political polling site that aggregated the firm’s survey results, uncovered that Wedgewood Polls was fabricating polling data and crowdfunding its purported research. The revelation about Wedgewood Polls parallels another incident from earlier this year involving a different fake polling firm called Median Strategies. In that case, the 21-year-old college graduate behind the company said he outright fabricated polling results in multiple races as part of a so-called social experiment intended to illustrate how polling data circulates widely with little to no vetting.Wedgewood’s fake polling data ended up on the websites of prominent polling aggregators, including FiftyPlusOne, VoteHub, Decision Desk HQ, and the New York Times, which incorporated figures from Wedgewood into their polling averages for key races spanning Georgia, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, Ohio, Texas, and Michigan.WHERE FALSE POLLING FROM WEDGEWOOD MIGHT HAVE MISLED CAMPAIGNSIn an effort to vet Wedgewood’s work beforehand, FiftyPlusOne contacted it back when it first began churning out surveys in June to ask about its background in polling and who exactly was operating the upstart firm.Wedgewood Polls told FiftyPlusOne that two individuals, a Republican named Jack Sims and a Democrat named Andrew Prater, comprised its bipartisan team.Sims previously worked for other pollsters that met FiftyPlusOne’s standards. “It is not atypical for a pollster to leave an existing firm, form their own, and self-fund some surveys to build reputation,” FiftyPlusOne wrote.Straight Arrow News previously learned in August that Wedgewood was only a two-person organization composed of one progressive and one conservative. Wedgewood confirmed to Straight Arrow News that it was a two-person shop, “not currently incorporated” but hoped to be soon, and that it generated revenue through “private polling work for individual clients.”Following its investigation this week, FiftyPlusOne declared that it will “no longer be aggregating results from Wedgewood Polls or any other polling firm founded or run by Jack Sims or Andrew Prater, the individuals Wedgewood originally told us were behind the firm.”VoteHub’s head of data science Zachary Donnini said on X that when he reached out to the head pollster at Wedgewood around the time it originally popped up in the polling ecosystem, they spoke over the phone and on the call, “He told me he was a college student at Boston University who had previously worked with SoCal Strategies and had paid for some inexpensive polls out of pocket.”That firm representative also mentioned to Donnini that the other member of the Wedgewood team was “involved in local Democratic politics in Ohio.”“They struck me as nice kids with at least some understanding of polling, but obviously no professional experience,” Donnini posted. “With that in mind, we assigned them a D grade and included their polling data on our site.”A Washington Examiner review of the Boston University directory did not show any students named Jack Sims or Andrew Prater.SoCal Strategies, however, confirmed that Sims once worked there. “Jack Sims is not currently employed with SoCal Strategies and has not been for a year,” the polling firm told the Washington Examiner. “His actions are his own and do not reflect on SoCal Strategies. Andrew Prater was never employed by SoCal Strategies.”Donnini said he even donated to Wedgewood’s Nebraska poll, which Wedgewood later disclosed was the only “fully legitimate” poll it ran, because he wanted to support students hoping to gain experience in the field of polling. “Misrepresenting polling data while asking people on ET to crowdfund is disappointing,” Donnini posted.The night before FiftyPlusOne was about to publicly unmask the operation as an apparent public opinion manipulation operation, Wedgewood Polls published a statement on social media Tuesday insisting that the venture was “an experimental project” meant to expose vulnerabilities in the polling industry, including lack of oversight and an overall low barrier to entry.“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 statement said. “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?”Describing itself as “a fictional entity run by a small group of industry veterans,” Wedgewood Polls touted how major polling aggregators included its illegitimate data in their polling averages for 2026 races.A columnist at Urban Milwaukee, one of the first outlets to raise suspicions about the firm, suspected in August that Wedgewood Polls was a ring-wing front group masquerading as progressives to manipulate Democratic primaries and push challengers less likely to win their general elections.Wedgewood Polls put out a poll in July showing socialist candidate Francesca Hong leading with a narrow edge over more centrist Democrats running for Wisconsin governor. Hong would ultimately lose the August primary by a razor-thin margin, capturing 39.3% of the vote compared to Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley winning 39.8%, a difference of roughly 0.5 percentage points.The conservative MacIver Institute for Public Policy promoted the poll at the time, saying it was sponsored by “Isthmus Political Report.” Isthmus, a similarly named longtime newspaper in Madison, told Urban Milwaukee it had nothing to do with the poll in question and that Isthmus had never sponsored a poll nor ever endorsed a candidate. MacIver Institute declined to answer questions asking about who sent the poll and what it knew about Isthmus Political Report.NEW FAKE POLLING SCANDAL RILES DEMOCRATS AHEAD OF MIDTERM ELECTIONSWedgewood Polls, however, released another poll’s results in July saying 75% of Maine voters wanted Graham Platner to drop out of the Senate race if another scandal surfaces, though the survey came out at a time when Platner’s Senate campaign was already imploding over sexual assault allegations.On Tuesday, Wedgewood Polls insisted that it “never intended to sway an election” or mislead voters and that data published under its brand was manufactured merely to “test” whether media outlets would run with the bogus numbers without independent verification.Minutes prior to posting its statement, Wedgewood Polls sent a crude direct message over X replying to FiftyPlusOne’s request for comment. “Our official response to your article: F*** you.”Wedgewood Polls has since closed its X inbox, and other accounts would need to know its X number, a private eight-digit code, to continue to message the firm.A Washington Examiner inquiry sent to the firm’s Gmail account bounced back, indicating that its business email is no longer operational.The New York Times has since removed all mentions of Wedgewood polling data it cited between June and October, according to an editor’s note on its main polling tracker page. In all, the New York Times included 15 polls released by Wedgewood in its aggregation. Decision Desk HQ also announced it removed a total of 17 polls attributed to Wedgewood from its race-level polling lists and averages.In its announcement, Decision Desk HQ linked to a standing statement explaining its process for vetting poll results, saying polls featured in its averages must meet standards set by the American Association for Public Opinion Research. “Responses must come from real people — not synthetic or AI-generated respondents. …We require a firm’s principal members to be publicly identified, and we only add polls that come directly from pollster, sponsor, news, or campaign websites; when anything is missing or unclear, we confirm by email.”FiftyPlusOne flagged in its investigative report material from Wedgewood Polls indicating that the firm generated marketing content with AI. “As a result, going forward, we intend to apply more rigorous screening for new pollsters — including meeting them in real life or via a video call, and potentially reviewing firms’ microdata — to hopefully avoid problems like this in the future,” FiftyPlusOne wrote.The Washington Examiner reached out to Decision Desk HQ, the New York Times, and FiftyPlusOne regarding how a startup firm was able to get its data included in their composite polling and whether any irregularities set off alarm bells.Decision Desk HQ said Wedgewood did not approach the site about using its data. “We did not have any contact with anyone associated with Wedgewood,” a spokesman for Decision Desk HQ told the Washington Examiner.FiftyPlusOne said Wedgewood Polls first appeared on its radar when references to the firm’s surveys started circulating on social media. As outlined in its expose, FiftyPlusOne then contacted Wedgewood Polls over email about its leadership and past experience.“It’s a fairly standard practice in the polling industry for an individual to break off from an existing firm and start their own,” the head of research at FiftyPlusOne told the Washington Examiner. “They were obviously using AI to create their poll releases, but there are many legitimate polling firms that are doing the same, so it wasn’t a big red flag at first.”Over time, however, as Wedgewood’s results “seemed to line up with media narratives, our suspicions grew, ultimately culminating in the investigation we conducted and published yesterday,” FiftyPlusOne’s head researcher said.The New York Times referred the Washington Examiner to its editor’s note saying the publication seeks to confirm the validity of all new pollsters before adding polls to its database. “In this case, the group answered a series of questions regarding the identities of the pollsters; the methods they were using to draw their sample, contact respondents and weight their polls; and the source of their funding,” the editorial statement says.