Polling Scandals Further Expose Corporate Media’s Preelection Psyop

Absolute scumbags. 

That’s how Democrat strategist and former Kamala Harris adviser Mike Nellis described Wedgewood Polling, another faux “election survey company” confessing that it made up numbers. Why? Wedgewood claims their bogus polls — rolled out in two widely watched Democratic Party primaries — were just an “experimental project.” The experiment was meant to track “the vulnerabilities, lack of oversight, and overall low barrier to entry in the modern political polling industry,” according to a press release issued Wednesday. 

Well, mission accomplished. 

These merry pranksters said they 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 press release states.  

Turns out very easy. 

In the release, the fake firm said it had no history, no formal credentials, and certainly no real data backing up its survey releases. That didn’t stop major polling aggregators such as The New York Times, FiftyPlusOne, VoteHub, and Decision Desk from treating the polls as a legitimate data source, the phony pollsters said. The Times acknowledged that it had posted 15 of Wedgewood’s polls, but only after it the phony firm answered its follow-up questions. 

“Our fabricated numbers were given instant credibility across national media platforms-including being cited on air and in reporting by outlets such as MS NOW,” the press release confessed. Newsweek, Decision Desk HQ and Mediaite also cited Wedgewood’s polls, PBS reported.  

And as fast as it had arrived on the midterm political scene, Wedgewood disappeared. The website is now an error message. Its email address is no longer operational, hence The Federalist could not reach Wedgwood officials for comment Wednesday. 

Wedgewood’s admission was the second such revelation in the past two months. As The Federalist’s Brianna Lyman reported in August, faux pollster Median Strategies announced it, too, was running a “social experiment” on deceptive polling in political races after it pushed out suspect surveys on Wisconsin’s gubernatorial and Los Angeles’ mayoral primary races. The bogus poll was shared by some local TV newscasts, online reporting outlets, and on social media. 

‘We’ve Got Momentum’

Michigan Senate Democrat candidate Abdul El-Sayed, an Islamist communist, got a big boost from Wedgewood’s baseless poll, according to Fox News Digital. 

In Wisconsin, Wedgewood’s “poll” in July showed Democratic Socialists of America candidate for governor Francesca Hong with 38 percent support in a crowded Democratic Party field. She led Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley by nearly 30 percentage points at the time. Crowley dropped out of the race amid his poor showing in the polls, only to be dragged back in by Wisconsin’s Democratic Party establishment. He ultimately won the nomination by a few thousand votes. 

“We’ve got momentum, folks! Wisconsin is ready,” Hong, who became nationally known as the Thanksgiving hater, wrote on her X account on July 5. She appears to be referring to a previous phony poll. The socialist begged her supporters to chip in on her ActBlue donation page. Hong, basking in the frontrunner position, raked in hefty donations in the closing weeks of the primary campaign. 

Many of the commenters on Hong’s post seemed dubious about the numbers and the pollsters. 

“I don’t think it’s fair that’s[sic] [H]ong has a higher percentage than the other candidates in this fake poll and I believe she should have to give 40 percent of her vote share to everybody else,” snarked a supporter of Wisconsin Rep. Tom Tiffany, the Badger State’s Republican candidate for governor.

“LOL…There is no known pollster named ‘Wedgewood,’ and no reputable source identifies any!” the incomparable MojoBaby6975 mocked. 

Au contraire, MojoBaby. 

Left-leaning corporate media publication Newsweek promoted Hong’s big lead in the Wedgewood phony poll in a July 6 piece. On Wednesday, the story featured a new, bold word in the original headline: “RETRACTED.”

Newsweek wasn’t alone. Several news outlets and aggregators published without seemingly questioning. As Simon & Garfunkel told us in “The Boxer,” a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.

“These people are absolute scumbags,” veteran Democratic strategist and former Kamala Harris adviser Mike Nellis told Fox News Digital. He was referring to the fake pollsters. “They can try to claim that they have some moral high ground here, but they lied about their polling data, got caught, and are freaking out because they’ve committed fraud.”

‘Yes, They Hate You’

Newsflash, Mike. It’s all fraud. The corporate media paid-for polls that have been so incredibly wrong in the past are as fraudulent as the “social experiments” from Wedgewood and company. 

It’s all one big psyop. 

“They want to suppress our vote,” veteran Republican pollster John McLaughlin told me on the latest episode of The Federalist Radio Hour. “These are not impartial media polls. These are biased media polls.”

McLaughlin, CEO and partner of New York-based McLaughlin & Associates, has seen this rodeo many times. Having polled for Donald Trump since the 2016 presidential campaign, McLaughlin has watched the usual suspects in the Pravda press tell America that Hillary Clinton was “a lock” to win 2016. Joe Biden was going to bring a GOP-drowning blue wave in 2020, with the polls showing the Democrat, again, trouncing Trump. But for some 44,000 votes in three swing states and some very questionable election administration, America would have missed out on the autopen presidency. 

“I remember in 2020, The Washington Post came out with a poll. They had Trump down 17 points in Wisconsin,” McLaughlin recalled. 

“The president called me. It was 6 a.m. in Las Vegas. I was in my office in New York. He calls me up and says, ‘What’s with this Washington Post poll?’ I said, ‘It’s a bad poll. They’re doing it on purpose.’ He said, ‘Why?’ I said, ‘It’s a week out in Wisconsin, it’s cold, there’s Covid. They know that the Biden [early voting] ballots were 2-to-1 in Wisconsin and they’re hoping that people won’t get on line if its snowy, cold and there’s Covid and they won’t vote for you because you win Election Day voters 2-to-1. So they’re trying to suppress your vote.’”

“The president said, ‘They would do that?’ I said, ‘Yes, they hate you.’”

NBC News’ Steve Kornacki two years ago asked: “The polls were off in 2020. Will they be again in 2024?” Why, yes they were, Steve. Badly. Again. 

“Remember all those polls two years ago saying Kamala Harris was going to be president?” McLaughlin said. 

Do we ever. One in particular. 

Democratic Party lapdog The Des Moines Register ran with a poll that was so egregious it’s become legendary. Iowa Republicans on the campaign trail speak of it often. Now-retired pollster J. Ann Selzer hung up a long consulting career after her poll became the ultimate outlier, showing Harris up by 3 percentage points over Trump among likely voters. In ruby red Iowa. Just days before Election Day. 

Trump would go on to win the state by a 13-point margin. Of course, you now have to scroll deeply to find that story on Google, whose leftist algorithm prefers the story about Trump losing his lawsuit in which he accused the Democrat-friendly newspaper and Selzer of selling Iowa consumers a bad bill of goods. Which, of course, they did. 

‘Suppression Polls’ 

It may be worse this year. The daily headlines scream victory for Democrats. Trump, the polls say, is wildly unpopular, his numbers are at record lows, declare Reuters/Ipsos. Republicans are in big trouble, Chris Cillizza, aka The Forehead, mongered on his podcast. Some predict that blue wave — maybe a tsunami this time. But the media pollsters just can’t quit their bad methodology and their passion for a particular narrative. 

“Poll after poll spells trouble for GOP candidates — in purple states and deep-red ones alike,” Axios proclaimed earlier this month. Hedging their bets, the pollsters cautioned the corporate media outlet that they may be “flying partly blind.”

“Even a modest polling error could mean the difference between Republicans retaining control of Congress and President Trump facing Democratic majorities in both chambers,” Axios reports. 

Oh, you don’t say. 

Axios acknowledged that polling Trump voters has “been notoriously difficult,” and that the polls have underestimated Trump’s support in all three presidential contests he’s been in. 

During this election season, there has been a significant surge in entirely Fake Polls and Suppression Polls designed to do nothing more than interfere with the regular functioning of the electoral process and alter the normal patterns of voter turnout and enthusiasm.

Many…

— Brendan Carr (@BrendanCarrFCC) October 21, 2026

McLaughlin said the media pollsters aren’t underestimating. They’re undercounting. Oversampling liberals/Democrats and undersampling conservatives/Republicans. And in some cases, missing likely voters altogether.

He points to an Emerson College poll in New York’s widely watched 17th Congressional District. The poll of 400 likely voters, released on Oct. 1, had Democrat challenger Cait Conley leading incumbent Republican Mike Lawler 48 percent to 46 percent, within the margin of error. It was conducted Sept. 27-29, in the middle of the Jewish holiday of Sukkot. McLaughlin said the poll undersampled the district’s Jewish population, which makes up approximately 19 percent of the 17th’s residents. Respondents were contacted via text messages leading them to an online survey. The polling window fell on the second day of Yom Tov, when Orthodox Jews take a break from phones and other electronic devices, according to The Monsey Scoop. 

On Wednesday, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr warned of the surge in “entirely Fake Polls and Suppression Polls”. And he reminded broadcasters that they are “prohibited by the terms of their federal licenses from engaging in News Distortion or promoting Broadcast Hoaxes.” 

“Many journalists and broadcasters have been amplifying or airing these Polls without regard to basic journalistic ethics and without informing the public that those Polls lack a scientific, accurate, or even real basis,” Carr wrote on X. 

There’s a word for such journalists and broadcasters. 

Scumbags. 

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Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.