The threat gained urgency after Wedgewood Polls confessed on social media to inventing numbers across battleground states including Texas, Ohio, Michigan, Kansas, and Maine. The fraudulent outfit only admitted to the deceit after an investigation by the polling and forecasting website FiftyPlusOne detected raw data anomalies. Before the deception was uncovered, The New York Times included 15 of Wedgewood's fabricated surveys in its tracking database between June and October. Data journalists and critics have pushed back against claims that the stunt was a benign experiment, characterizing it instead as deliberate fraud.
Key points
Mainstream polling trackers are vulnerable to fraudulent firms that manage to satisfy bas…: Mainstream polling trackers are vulnerable to fraudulent firms that manage to satisfy basic methodological and funding questions.
Fraudulent operations like Wedgewood Polls and Median Strategies have falsely claimed the…: Fraudulent operations like Wedgewood Polls and Median Strategies have falsely claimed their deceptive operations were social experiments after being caught.
The rapid spread of manufactured polling numbers among campaigns and commentators undermi…: The rapid spread of manufactured polling numbers among campaigns and commentators undermines public confidence in electoral information.
Sources checked by our analysis pipeline: 1
Fabricated surveys are adding to tensions in the country’s increasingly polarised political environment.
Fabricated political polling has forced its way into the spotlight during the midterm election period in the United States.
Revelations that a small number of fraudulent firms have released fictitious results – some of which were picked up by news outlets and polling trackers – have raised concerns about how easily false information can acquire credibility.
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Those datasets can be used to cast doubt on the electoral process. And when bad actors are unmasked, their existence can be leveraged to undermine voter confidence in election information overall.
The latest example occurred earlier this month, when Wedgewood Polls released a statement on social media admitting its statistics about a bevy of battleground states – like Texas, Ohio, Michigan, Kansas and Maine – were fake.
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