The Wedgewood scandal has a Boston connection—and raises questions about how polling earns the public’s trust.
Election polls help shape the stories voters hear about who is winning, who is struggling and which campaigns deserve attention. A national polling scandal now raises a more basic question: Were the voters behind some of those numbers ever surveyed?
In a stunning revelation, Wedgewood Polls admitted October 20 that it had fabricated polling data after election analysts at FiftyPlusOne confronted it with questions about its research.
The operators described their activity as a “social experiment” intended to expose weaknesses in polling and media scrutiny.
That explanation came after investigators sought comment. FiftyPlusOne says Wedgewood had presented itself as a legitimate polling operation, collected crowdfunding donations and supplied underlying survey data that investigators determined was fraudulent.
Framing it as an experiment after exposure does not erase the harm: it entered major aggregators and media, misled coverage, and affected real campaigns. Crowdfunding under false pretenses compounds the issue. The episode exposes weak vetting standards that need stricter verification of methodology and raw data. Deliberate fabrication remains unethical regardless of the stated intent.
The numbers reached familiar names who repeated the bad data
Mediaite reported that MS NOW featured a Wedgewood survey showing Democrat Jocelyn Benson leading Republican John James by 10 points in Michigan’s governor race. Newsweek and Mediaite also used Wedgewood data. The New York Times included Wedgewood surveys in its polling tracker and subsequently removed them, explaining the decision in an editor’s note.
Publishing a story about an individual poll gives its findings direct attention. Including it in a polling average allows its numbers to influence a broader estimate. While reporting poll results does not establish that a newsroom commissioned or paid for the poll, the documented problem is that fabricated findings were accepted and circulated.
A Boston connection and a New England race
Wedgewood’s own GoFundMe page lists its organizer’s location as Boston, Massachusetts. The fundraiser was created to support Nebraska polling.
Wedgewood also released purported polling of Maine’s U.S. Senate race. A survey recorded as ending October 1 showed Democrat Troy Jackson ahead of Republican Susan Collins, 52% to 48%, now in question as to reliability.
The public material reviewed for this article did not establish that Wedgewood conducted a Rhode Island race survey or that media here who traditionally report polls done in or out of state, used its findings. Nor did it establish a subcontracting relationship between Wedgewood and the more familiar polling organizations.
A 73 percent finding that Democrats have been polled more frequently than others
A separate analysis raises questions about polling accuracy.
In an August 18 article, Republican pollster Patrick Ruffini examined 3,312 Senate polls from four election cycles in the former FiveThirtyEight archive. He reported that 73% overstated the Democratic candidate’s margin compared with the eventual election result, with an average error of 3.7 percentage points in the Democratic direction. His analysis found larger discrepancies during summer, narrowing as Election Day approached.
That is a finding that concerns the results of a particular collection of Senate polls. A difference between a summer poll and the eventual vote can reflect changes in voter preferences and turnout expectations as well as problems with sampling or adjustment.
Oversampling also has a technical meaning: researchers can intentionally interview extra members of a group to study it more precisely, then weight the results to represent the population. Whether that produces a sound estimate depends on the sampling and weighting methods, not simply the raw number of Democrats or Republicans interviewed.
Broader findings show why scope matters. The American Association for Public Opinion Research’s review of 2024 found that polls in the final two weeks overstated Democratic margins by 2.7 points across offices. Its corresponding figures for recent midterms were much smaller: a 0.6-point Republican overestimate in 2022 and a 0.1-point Democratic overestimate in 2018.
Errors deserve examination. Evidence of an error does not, by itself, establish fabricated interviews or intentional manipulation.
Which polls are Rhode Islanders seeing?
The following is a guide to documented polling sources and media relationships, rather than a ranking of how frequently each outlet publishes them.
Outlet or source | Polling organization | Documented relationship
WPRI / 12 News | Emerson College Polling | Jointly branded Rhode Island polling. Emerson identifies its October 8–11 survey of 800 likely voters as an Emerson College Polling/WPRI-TV 12 News survey.
NBC 10 / WJAR | University of New Hampshire Survey Center | Reported UNH’s Ocean State Poll, including September 24 coverage of the governor, Senate and lieutenant governor races. Reporting a poll does not establish that the station commissioned it.
NBC 10 / WJAR | Salve Regina University Pell Center / Embold Research | Reported the Pell Center survey released October 20. Salve identifies Embold as the firm that fielded the survey.
The Providence Journal | University of New Hampshire Survey Center | Published reporting on UNH’s Rhode Island governor polling, documented in an April 23 Journal article also distributed through AOL. This is an example of coverage, not evidence of an exclusive polling partnership.
USA TODAY coverage and the wider USA TODAY Network | Suffolk University Political Research Center | Suffolk documents polling partnerships with USA TODAY and network publications. The Journal belongs to the USA TODAY Network; that affiliation alone does not establish that it published every Suffolk survey or commissioned one locally. (Note: USA TODAY acknowledged citing Wedgewood’s results and said it was adding editor’s notes and removing references to the fabricated data. The Providence Journal is part of the USA TODAY Network, giving Rhode Island readers a reason to examine the source behind nationally distributed polling coverage. That affiliation alone does not establish that the Journal published the affected stories.)
Salve Regina University Pell Center | Embold Research | Salve’s October survey was directed by Katie Sonder and fielded by Embold October 5–8 among 815 likely Rhode Island voters. The university provides a report, crosstabs and methodology statement.
What readers should look for
A useful poll report should identify who conducted the survey, who sponsored or paid for it, when interviews occurred, how respondents were recruited, the population surveyed and the exact questions asked.
Readers should also distinguish the statewide sample from smaller subgroups. An overall survey of hundreds of voters may contain far fewer respondents in a particular district, age group or party, making those estimates less precise.
A polling average deserves its own scrutiny: which surveys qualify, how much weight does each receive, and what happens when a pollster’s credibility collapses?
For newsrooms, the Wedgewood episode makes verification part of the story. A professional-looking chart, a plausible result and a place in someone else’s database are insufficient evidence that a survey was conducted as claimed.
Even legitimate pollsters face a public that is increasingly difficult to reach. Many households have abandoned landlines, while cellphone users often ignore unfamiliar numbers amid a flood of spam calls. Fewer people agree to participate, pushing pollsters toward combinations of telephone interviews, text invitations and online surveys. The challenge is whether those who respond adequately represent those who do not.
Pew Research Center warns that declining participation increases the risk of distorted results when those differences are not corrected through statistical weighting. Sound methods can still produce useful findings, but readers need to know how respondents were selected and how the results were adjusted before treating a headline number as a reliable picture of the electorate.
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr also warned broadcasters about airing fabricated polls.
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