A polling firm's fabrication scandal raises questions about whether Kalshi can reverse payouts when the data used to settle contracts are later discredited.
Polling firm Wedgewood admitted on Oct. 20 that it fabricated most of its election surveys, and VoteHub, one of the aggregators that carried its results, is also the data source for recurring Kalshi contracts.
Kalshi's September 2025 regulatory filing names VoteHub as the source agency for those contracts and states that “revisions to the Underlying made after Expiration will not be accounted for in determining the Expiration Value.”
The two facts raise a question about what happens to a settled contract when the polling number behind it is later withdrawn or found false.
Researchers at FiftyPlusOne requested raw data from Wedgewood's Mississippi Senate survey and found inconsistencies in respondent identifiers and transaction records. They commissioned a comparison survey through the same provider, Pollfish, and its records looked materially different.
Wedgewood then admitted the fabrication while describing one Nebraska poll as legitimate. VoteHub's head of data science, Zachary Donnini, said he spoke with a Wedgewood representative before including the firm's polling, and that VoteHub graded Wedgewood a D and incorporated its data anyway.
The Guardian reported that VoteHub was among the polling databases that carried the results.
The Sept. 12, 2025 certification for Kalshi's VOTEHUBAPPROVE contracts designates VoteHub's time-adjusted polling average as the underlying and fixes the settlement value at expiration.
A fixed observation time is ordinary in event contracts, because traders need a definitive reference. The design also ties settlement to the reliability of the source data available at that moment.
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