As Democrats push to gain control of Congress, polls that may have shown them leading various battleground races have been exposed as part of a widespread fraud.

A group called Wedgewood Polling admitted that the numbers it tossed around in Georgia, Michigan, Texas, and other states were fake, according to USA Today, which was among the outlets that said they were fooled.

"The Wedgewood results in some cases were slightly more favorable for Democrats than other polls in the same race,” USA Today noted, citing one poll that had incumbent Georgia Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff ahead of his Republican rival, Rep. Mike Collins, by 10 percentage points.

Time noted that Newsweek, MS NOW, and Politico also embraced the fake polling. The New York Times admitted to using 15 of Wedgewood’s polls.
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WASHINGTON (TNND) — A fake polling firm tricked several media outlets with fabricated surveys, claiming they were part of a "social experiment," angering Democrats.

Wedgewood Polling on Tuesday released a statement on X saying that it was an "experimental project to demonstrate the vulnerabilities, lack of oversight, and overall low barrier to entry in the modern political polling industry."

The group said it was "far too easy" for their polls to "gain traction" and "be taken seriously."

"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," the statement reads.

"Our fabricated numbers were given instant credibility across national media platforms—including being cited on air and in reporting by outlets such as MS NOW. The ease with which unverified figures were absorbed into mainstream political narratives highlights a systemic breakdown in media vetting and data aggregation."
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In August and this month, four different polling outfits were exposed for fabricating data.

In August, Median Strategies admitted inventing polls on the Los Angeles mayoral contest and the election races in Nevada and Wisconsin as a “social experiment”.

That same month, an outfit called Public Sentiment admitted having altered data in the Florida GOP primary polls in order to favor a client.

This month two more firms were exposed: Wedgewood Polls and SoCal Strategies. Wedgewood (about which I can find the most follow-up) was widely promoted by the NY Times and the Silver Bulletin, its most broadly touted figures promoted Michigan Democratic senatorial candidate Abdul El-Sayed.

SoCal was also unmasked this month, after people started poking around into its personnel ties to Wedgewood .
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Per Grok, there has been over “$1.4 billion in trading volume so far on 2026 U.S. midterm-related markets (as of late October 2026) according to a CNN analysis published 23, 2026. Kalshi (the largest such regulated platform) had a volume of over $1.1 billion, and Polymarket more than $340 million.

Call me an unredeemed cynic if you will, but when there is so much money riding on the election prediction market, I think people are likely scamming the data for a more lucrative reason than just influencing elections.
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The traditional media have posted this nonsense clearly without any vetting and should now be red-faced. Not only has the polling industry taken a massive blow, but so have the outlets that promoted this garbage.

The NYT just removed 15 fake election surveys that it had included in its tracking surveys. USA Today, which, like the rest of the media pack, touted polling garbage, claims there’s a silver lining in this black mark against the polling industry -- that now the media will be more careful. Some “silver lining.”
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The bitter fight over a Texas Senate seat that Democrats believe is within reach for the first time in decades should be ramping up right now.

But in the final push, when campaigns believe most voters are finally tuning in, Democratic state Rep. James Talarico has been off the trail for in-person events in the state for 12 days.

His campaign says he has the flu and is expected to be back in action this weekend.

While he has appeared virtually at a forum, Talarico’s last in-person event in the state was on Sept. 26. He visited New York on Sept. 29 for a private fundraiser, and, according to the virtual remarks he gave to the Hispanic Business Council the next day, he returned to Dallas and visited urgent care.
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Explosive rumors are circulating about the whereabouts of Texas State Rep. James Talarico (D-50th District), and if they prove true, his Senate campaign is over.

Sara Gonzales of The Blaze reported Thursday that she had received a tip she was still working to confirm.
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Gonzales didn't say what the information was, but GOP strategist Caroline Wren did, and what she's hearing, though unconfirmed, is huge.

"James Talarico is straight up missing one month before the election," Wren told Steve Bannon on Real America's Voice.

To recap, Talarico was last seen in Texas at a football game on Sept. 26. Invitations show New York City fundraisers with Robert De Niro on Sept. 28 and Sept. 29. Then, on Sept. 30, Talarico appeared by video at a Hispanic business event he was supposed to have attended in person, and said he had come down with the flu and visited a Dallas clinic. Wren concludes that account would put him in a Dallas medical clinic on the same night he was supposed to have been at a fundraiser in Manhattan.

Nobody has seen him in public since.

After Bannon floated the possibility that Talarico was simply off raising money in New York or Los Angeles, Wren said photos from those events would have surfaced by now.

Then she shared what her sources in Texas are telling her.

"I'm hearing that he checked himself into a mental institution, that he had a full-blown mental breakdown sometime around, I guess, September 29th or September 30th," she said.

Now, to be clear, nobody has verified this. Wren said so herself, and she deserves credit for not dressing up a tip as a confirmed fact. "So, I heard this from someone in Texas," she said. "I have no idea what the truth is." She called on investigative reporters to chase it down, and that's the right call. A claim like this about any candidate, Republican or Democrat, needs proof before anyone treats it as settled.

But the rumor has legs because the Talarico campaign is acting like it’s hiding something, and its public explanations don’t make sense. The official story is the flu. Twelve days of it.

"I've had the flu many times. We've all had the flu," Wren said. "You are not out for 12 days. Like, give me a break — that is not an excuse for this."
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Hallie Shoffner, who is running to unseat Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), defended “undocumented” farm workers as exceptionally hardworking, after previously saying she grew up around “undocumented” farm workers, discussing Mexican H-2A employees on her family farm, defending farmers’ reliance on foreign-born labor, and leading a nonprofit that assisted “undocumented Hispanics.”

“Every farmer will tell you at one point, we did, or still do, employ undocumented immigrants, and it’s absolutely ridiculous that these folks are being rounded up because they’re hardworking people,” Shoffner said on Free Arkansas with host Andy McNeill. “They’re some of the best people we know, and honestly, we’d trade five Americans for just one of them because of how hard they work.”

“And why is it that there’s no pathway for them to work here legally when they’re good workers? We pay them well. They spend money here. They have family here,” Shoffner said.

“We’re acting like all Republicans like what’s happening with ICE, and Tom Cotton’s basically saying you, Andy, if you’re a Republican and you disagree with my position on ICE, or if you’re asking any kind of questions about it, well, you must be anti-American and anti-safety,” Shoffner said. “And I’m like, I have a seven-year-old boy. All I think about is safety.”

Laura Loomer highlighted the interview on X,
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Lindy Li, a former Democratic fundraiser who switched her party affiliation over unheeded warning signs about President Joe Biden's decline in the 2024 election, says Democrats had internal polling showing that Kamala Harris was far from the party’s best shot at beating Donald Trump.

But that polling wasn’t convenient.

"The polling numbers went directly against the narrative that the party wanted to espouse," Li said.

"They knew that skipping over Kamala Harris would be a slap in the face to the bedrock of the party, which is Black women in particular, and they just wouldn't have it," Li told Fox News Digital in an exclusive interview.

Li recalled that former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Harris had been floated as possible replacements for Biden before Biden announced his decision to step down.

According to Li, Harris was at the bottom of the group.

"Kamala Harris came in dead last. It wasn't even close. Pete Buttigieg, who hilariously received 0% support from the Black vote, did better than she did. And yet the party is so straitjacketed by DEI that they had no choice but to appoint her," Li said.​