By Staff, Agencies

Major US news outlets amplified fabricated election polls showing Democratic gains, lending national credibility to a fictitious polling firm before investigators exposed its invented data.

Wedgewood Polls emerged in June and received coverage from outlets including Newsweek, the Daily Beast and The Hill. Its surveys were also incorporated into polling databases maintained by The New York Times, election analyst Nate Silver and other prominent aggregators.

On Tuesday, after researchers at election analysis website FiftyPlusOne confronted the operation, Wedgewood admitted that almost all its surveys were fabricated. The group described the deception as an experiment designed to test how easily a fictitious polling firm could gain recognition and credibility.

“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? The short answer: Far too easy,” the group said in a statement.

Wedgewood said it had been accepted by major polling aggregators despite lacking an established history, formal credentials or genuine data.

It also claimed that mainstream outlets, including MS NOW, had cited its figures on air. The group said it conducted one genuine crowdfunded poll in Nebraska for internal comparison.

The admission triggered a wave of corrections and removals. The New York Times removed 15 Wedgewood surveys, polling tracker Decision Desk HQ removed 17, and Newsweek retracted three articles and corrected others.

Before the disclosures, Wedgewood’s figures had featured in reports suggesting Democrats were gaining ground ahead of the November midterm elections.

Its purported surveys showed Democratic Senate candidates leading in Republican strongholds, including Texas, Ohio and Kansas. A Democratic Senate campaign in Mississippi also cited a fabricated result as evidence of “massive momentum.”

The false polling reportedly affected individual candidates as well. Michigan state Senator Mallory McMorrow said a bogus survey showing her support collapsing contributed to reduced donations and demoralized volunteers before she withdrew from the Democratic Senate primary in July.

Questions about Wedgewood had circulated for months, but its figures continued appearing in news reports and polling databases.

FiftyPlusOne ultimately exposed the operation by examining underlying survey records and identifying inconsistencies with the platform Wedgewood claimed to use.

The revelations come less than two weeks before the November 3 midterms, when voters will decide control of Congress. Republicans are defending narrow majorities in both chambers as President Donald Trump campaigns amid public dissatisfaction over living costs and the US “Israeli” war on Iran.