How a Fake Pollster May Have Hurt Real Candidates

“It is not atypical for a pollster to leave an existing firm, form their own, and self-fund some surveys to build reputation; we had no reason at the time to believe this case was any different,” FiftyPlusOne said regarding Sims. 

“This event does not help what is a decades-long trend of declining confidence in the polling industry,” Morris added, when asked about Sims’ involvement with Wedgewood. TIME has been unable to reach Sims for comment.

The polling scandal has sparked a flurry of reactions within the politics and government sector, with one former Senate hopeful claiming the numbers circulated by Wedgewood contributed to the collapse of her campaign.

Democratic Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow recalled how a poll from Wedgewood had shown her “plummeting into single digits.”

Wedgewood released polling on June 29 that placed McMorrow as having the support of only 9% of registered voters, leaving her trailing behind Haley Stevens and Abdul El-Sayed. Other polls also showed McMorrow in third place with single digits. A Susquehanna Polling survey conducted June 9 to 14 put McMorrow at 9%, although 49% of Democratic primary voters surveyed were undecided. A July 1 Quantus Insights poll put her at under 8%. McMorrow suspended her campaign on July 5, just one month before the primaries. 

In a statement posted to social media on Oct. 20, McMorrow said donations “dried up” and she was “hounded” with calls to exit the race after the circulation of the “infamous” Wedgewood poll numbers.