Who exactly was running Wedgewood Polls, an admittedly fraudulent polling firm whose data have appeared over the past four months on the polling sites of some of the country’s top aggregators, and why they pursued the project remains one of the biggest mysteries in Washington just weeks before the midterm elections.

Several reports say the operation was run by career pollsters claiming to be from both sides of the political aisle while another polling aggregator, drawn into publishing the skewed survey results, disclosed that it was told college students with scant professional experience founded Wedgewood as a grassroots project.