Dem who lost Michigan primary slams fake polling outlet as it admits it fabricated data

Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, D, this week raged against Wedgewood Polls after the organized publicly stated that its data was entirely fabricated, contending that its publication of data showing her losing ground in the Democratic Senate Primary had ended her campaign.

"Trust is already at an all-time low. We don't get out of this mess without rebuilding trust," McMorrow said on X. "And media - who loves to ride the drama of a pollercoaster - needs to take a hard look at what's legitimate and what's not. If this teaches us anything - DON'T GET COMPLACENT AND DON'T TRUST THE POLLS."

Wedgewood Polls on Tuesday issued a statement saying it was an "experimental project" to showcase the poor state of the polling industry, including what it called a "lack of oversight, and overall low barrier to entry." The statement confirmed that Wedgewood had only produced one legitimate poll and that its fabricated data had been included in major polling aggregators, such as the New York Times, FiftyPlusOne, and VoteHub.

McMorrow was a leading candidate for the Michigan Democratic Senate nomination, but she dropped out before election day after polling showed her losing support. The most notable of those was a fabricated Wedgewood poll that showed her in single digits. McMorrow blamed the publication of that data on her campaign losing momentum.

"As one of the candidates featured in these polls - the infamous one in late June that showed me plummeting into single digits (which was at odds with our internals) - here's the impact of this 'experiment'

- Donations dried up
- Volunteers were devastated and pleading for guidance on what to do
- Reporters hounded me with calls to drop out," she said.

"Sure, a point was proven. Polling is broken. But tens of thousands of people poured their hearts, time, energy, hard-earned money into something they believed in - for a year-and-a-half, and it was treated like a game," she added. "Our volunteers gave their all. And then some. I felt like I had let so many of them down."

Wedgewood's statement currently features a community note stating that it was published after polling aggregator FiftyPlusOne had contacted the outlet seeking proof of their data.

Ben Whedon is the Chief Political Correspondent at Just the News. Follow him on X.