US pollster Wedgewood admits fabricating data as FCC chair warns broadcasters
The US polling firm Wedgewood Polling has publicly admitted it fabricated data, even though its results had been included in several poll aggregators. The chair of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Carr, has urged broadcasters to meet their public interest obligations.
Wedgewood Polling, a little-known US polling firm, has publicly admitted that most of its published surveys were not based on real data. The chair of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the US regulator of broadcasters, Carr, then issued a warning to broadcasters. In a post made the day before this report, he urged them to comply with their public interest obligations under the terms of their federal licenses. The headline refers to the "fake polls" that President Trump keeps complaining about.
What Wedgewood admitted
The company's statement said that most of its releases had no history, formal credentials or real data behind them. Even so, the firm was added to major polling aggregators, including The New York Times, FiftyPlusOne and VoteHub, and was repeatedly treated as a legitimate source.
Those three aggregators are not broadcasters or news networks whose programming runs on local broadcast stations. That matters because Carr has repeatedly said he uses the FCC's authority only over broadcasters that hold licenses to use public spectrum, not over media outlets without FCC licenses.
The aggregators respond
FiftyPlusOne says it was preparing an article exposing the fraud and had sent Wedgewood a request for comment. The firm did not reply but posted a statement on social media admitting it had fabricated data. FiftyPlusOne also says it did vet the firm: it asked who was behind it and was given two names, Jack Sims and Andrew Prater. It independently confirmed that Sims had earlier experience in the polling industry and reviewed the methodology statement in detail. Wedgewood behaved like a legitimate pollster, including collecting money from donors for crowd-funded polls, and on Oct. 15, 2026 it shared raw survey data with FiftyPlusOne, which has since been confirmed as fraudulent.
VoteHub's Head of Data Science, Zachary Donnini, said that after speaking with Wedgewood's "head pollster," VoteHub gave the firm a D grade and included its data on the site. The New York Times updated its polling page with a statement about Wedgewood.
