For about four months this year, a polling firm called Wedgewood Polls was a regular presence in midterm coverage. Its surveys bounced around social media, landed in a New York Times database tracking polls from across the industry, and were folded into the averages of aggregators used by CBS News, NewsNation, and The Hill. There was just one problem: the polls weren’t real. And it took a year-old upstart called FiftyPlusOne, and about $900 of its own money, to prove it.
That sum gave G. Elliott Morris a moment’s pause. Morris and other veterans of the now-shuttered FiveThirtyEight at ABC News launched FiftyPlusOne, a polling and electoral analysis site, just about a year ago, and as he told me, even small investments are a big decision when you’re “not the most moneyed operation.” But it was all it took to expose the latest scandal rocking the political polling and media worlds…
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