Wedgewood Admits Fabricating Polls; McMorrow: Their 'Experiment' Damaged Campaign

(Source: MIRS.news, Published 10/20/2026) An outfit calling itself “Wedgewood Polls” admitted today that its results were mostly fabricated, prompting former Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Mallory McMorrow to describe how a June release from Wedgewood placing her at 9% damaged fundraising, devastated volunteers and intensified pressure to leave the race.

The organization characterized itself as an “experimental project” intended to expose inadequate scrutiny of political polling. Its statement acknowledged that the vast majority of its releases lacked real survey data, while claiming one crowdfunded Nebraska poll was legitimate.

Its June 29 Michigan release placed McMorrow at 9% in the Democratic primary, behind Abdul El-Sayed at 46% and U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens at 39%, with 6% undecided. It claimed to have surveyed 353 likely Democratic primary voters from June 25–28.

The release also portrayed McMorrow as the weakest Democrat against Republican Mike Rogers. Its purported general-election results showed Rogers leading McMorrow 48% to 41%, Stevens tied with Rogers at 46%, and El-Sayed leading Rogers 49% to 44%.

The nine-page document included demographic breakdowns and detailed claims about sampling, weighting and safeguards against fraudulent responses.

McMorrow, a Democratic state senator from Royal Oak, said the release contradicted her campaign’s internal polling but had immediate consequences.

“Donations dried up,” she wrote on X. “Volunteers were devastated and pleading for guidance on what to do.”

She said reporters hounded her with calls to drop out.

“Sure, a point was proven. Polling is broken. But tens of thousands of people poured their hearts, time, energy, hard-earned money into something they believed in—for a year-and-a-half, and it was treated like a game,” McMorrow wrote.

“Our volunteers gave their all. And then some. I felt like I had let so many of them down.”

Wedgewood’s admission followed an investigation by polling analysis organization FiftyPlusOne, which identified evidence of fabricated respondent-level data in a purported Mississippi Senate survey.

FiftyPlusOne said it requested comment from Wedgewood today before the organization issued its statement. The analysts found that respondent identifiers and other records supplied by Wedgewood did not match patterns in authentic data from the survey platform it claimed to have used.

FiftyPlusOne removed Wedgewood’s surveys from its database and polling averages.

Wedgewood argued in its statement that fabricated figures gained credibility through inclusion in major polling aggregators and coverage by national media. It described the project as a wake-up call rather than an effort to influence elections.

FiftyPlusOne disputed Wedgewood’s assertion that it had failed to vet the organization, saying it had asked about personnel and methodology and independently confirmed prior polling experience for one of the people identified as being behind the firm.

For McMorrow, the admission explained one part of what she described as a damaging sequence of polls during the Democratic primary.

In a second post, she said a separate Mitchell Research & Communications poll had also placed her in single digits before Wedgewood’s release.

McMorrow alleged that the Mitchell survey used an open SurveyMonkey link that people could share and complete repeatedly. She said her campaign challenged its methodology and that MIRS ultimately declined to publish it. Instead, Politico learned of the Mitchell survey and published its results.

Her criticism of Mitchell concerns a separate methodology dispute. Wedgewood’s admission does not establish that Mitchell fabricated its results.

“But then this one hit immediately after. It was a one-two punch,” McMorrow wrote. “Then all of the sudden it was a pattern—and people believed it had to be true.”

“It killed us.”

After the Mitchell poll, Susquehanna Polling and Research had McMorrow at 9%. Quantus Insights on July 1 had McMorrow at 8%.

She described the period as among the worst days of the campaign, particularly for her staff.

“There are no words to explain the morale blow, and nothing I could do or say to my team to fix it,” she wrote.

McMorrow said her campaign took a financial risk by putting advertisements on the air and believed they were working, but could not overcome outside spending and the narrative that her support had collapsed.

She also called for broader campaign finance and transparency reforms, criticizing misleading fundraising deadlines and matching claims, PACs that enrich consultants without meaningfully supporting candidates, undisclosed paid political content and dark money advertising.

“Trust is already at an all-time low. We don’t get out of this mess without rebuilding trust,” McMorrow wrote.

Wedgewood Polls released what it claimed to be an Oct. 8-9 poll of 607 likely Michigan voters that found Abdul El-Sayed up on Mike Rogers 53% to 47% with 0% undecided in Michigan's open U.S. Senate race. Newsweek picked up the poll, as did “Kalshi News.”