By Nate Silver unloaded on the operators of a fake polling firm after their invented election numbers made it into major polling aggregators, exposing an embarrassing failure among organizations Americans rely on to separate political reality from spin.
Speaking with Galen Druke and Clare Malone on the Still Counting podcast, Silver told the people behind Wedgewood Polling to “go f*ck yourselves. I hope you’re put in jail,” before clarifying that he did not mean the statement literally. The operation had admitted that most of its polling was fabricated, then tried to present the deception as a public service.
In a statement on Twitter, Wedgewood cast its work as an experiment demonstrating how easily bogus numbers could acquire institutional credibility.
Absolutely incredible…
"Wedgewood Polls" just admitted they are a fake polling firm and made up their polls.
Their fake polls have been posted in both the NYT and Nate Silver’s averages. pic.twitter.com/ceZU2NdpK5
— Geiger Capital (@Geiger_Capital) October 21, 2026
“Despite having no history, formal credentials, or real data behind the vast majority of our releases, Wedgewood Polling was added to major polling aggregators, including The New York Times, FiftyPlusOne, and VoteHub, and repeatedly treated as a legitimate data source.”
But the timing undercut that explanation. According to FiftyPlusOne, Wedgewood acknowledged the fabrication only after investigators contacted the operation on Oct. 20 seeking comment on evidence that its surveys were fraudulent. The confession arrived as exposure was imminent.
FiftyPlusOne also disputed Wedgewood’s claim that aggregators had simply accepted its work without scrutiny. The organization said it had requested identifying information, reviewed the firm’s methodology and independently confirmed that one person named by Wedgewood had previous polling experience. Wedgewood subsequently supplied purported raw survey data that FiftyPlusOne determined was fabricated. It had also collected money from donors for polling.
Silver argued that online political observers too often extend credibility to newcomers whose work has not earned it, saying “people on Twitter are sometimes too kind to these enterprising college kids or whatever they are that start doing these kind of polls that are even at best kind of mediocre.”
His own operation was among those caught up in the mess. Silver had included Wedgewood’s results in his averages. RealClearPolitics reported that removing those numbers and incorporating a Marist poll reduced Democratic margins in several key Senate races without substantially changing the overall picture.
Other aggregators avoided the trap. RealClearPolitics said it never included Wedgewood’s surveys in its averages or polling pages, pointing to the operation’s lack of a track record, rudimentary website and absence of a public staff directory. Those warning signs were enough to keep its numbers out.
Silver acknowledged that spreading “knowingly false information” is likely “still protected speech in a constitutional sense,” while suggesting that collecting money for the surveys could raise additional questions. He also raised possible motives involving political influence or prediction markets, without establishing that Wedgewood had pursued either.
“If you’re doing these sort of narrative-setting polls then maybe you are buying positions on prediction markets and then the line goes up and you cash them out or whatever else… or you have a political agenda,” Silver said.
Calling the operation an experiment does little to resolve the credibility problem it leaves behind. Fabricated numbers gained the authority of established institutions, and readers were given another reason to question whether the election analysis presented to them had been adequately checked.
Silver’s reaction to the outing of fake pollsters comes as another poll watcher has warned Democrats that they might not be in as comfortable of a position as previously thought.
Don’t know if a poll miss will occur in 2026, but Dems need to win & lead in a bunch of Trump won states.
During the Trump era, tho, the GOP has most frequently outperformed their Senate polls in Trump won states (4.1 pts on avg).
Avg. miss could lead to GOP holding control. pic.twitter.com/dwjMza8DIy
— (((Harry Enten))) (@ForecasterEnten) October 21, 2026
CNN’s Harry Enten has also warned that Democrats’ path to Senate control depends on winning several states Trump carried, where Republican Senate candidates have outperformed their polls by an average of 4.1 percentage points during the Trump era. That history does not guarantee another polling miss in 2026, but it offers Democrats a reason for caution: an error in line with that average could be enough to keep Republicans in control of the Senate.
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