The polling industry has been roiled by problems for a decade now, going back to Donald Trump’s presidential victory in 2016. But the problems go far beyond the polls being wrong, as completely fabricated polls continue to pop up and be promoted as legitimate.
A polling organization called Wedgewood Polls released a statement on Tuesday claiming it was “an experimental project to demonstrate the vulnerabilities, lack of oversight, and overall low barrier to entry in the modern political polling industry.” According to the outfit, the people behind it wanted to see “How easy it is for an entirely fabricated polling firm to gain traction” and “be taken seriously.”
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As it turned out, it was fairly easy, at least for a short time. Wedgewood’s fabricated polling numbers were included in numerous polling aggregators. One aggregator, FiftyPlusOne, claimed that it was in the process of proving that Wedgewood’s polls were fabricated, which prompted the confession.
That short amount of time was all the outfit needed to inflict real damage in several campaigns. Wedgewood released a poll in the Michigan Senate primary that showed Mallory McMorrow in the single digits, a distant third in a three-person race. McMorrow herself claims the poll caused donations to dry up and ultimately led to her campaign’s collapse. The poll also showed Abdul el Sayed up by double digits over Haley Stevens, feeding the narrative that he was dominating the race. That narrative was proven false when the votes were cast, as he won only by the skin of his teeth.
Wedgewood published several other fake polls, including one showing the incumbent Republican senator in Mississippi leading her Democratic opponent by just 4 points. Among the polling aggregators that incorporated Wedgewood’s polls were the New York Times, FiftyPlusOne, VoteHub, Nate Silver, and Decision Desk HQ.
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The problem goes deeper than one fake polling outlet. For one, Wedgewood is not even the only fake pollster of this election cycle. Another outfit called Median Strategies purposefully released a fake poll in the Los Angeles mayoral race showing Mayor Karen Bass leading Nithya Raman by double digits, which Bass promoted to the public. Nor is the problem merely the fake polls: Several polls have skewed in favor of more progressive Democratic candidates and against Republicans, including in the Wisconsin gubernatorial primary. In fact, the reason Wedgewood Polls was able to slip its Michigan Senate poll into the mainstream was that several polling outfits were incorrectly asserting that el Sayed had a commanding or growing lead, or both.
The lack of scrutiny of pollsters, whether they are established outfits with poor track records or pop-up outfits that may or may not even be legitimate, has a real effect on the political landscape, causing campaign donations to dry up and affecting turnout among voters who become convinced their candidate has no hope. The problem is not just that Wedgewood Polls was intentionally fabricating results. The problem is that the polling industry accepted those fabricated polls for nearly an entire election cycle.
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[ H/T Washington Examiner ]
