How decisions get made

When sources disagree, the higher one wins and the page says which was used.

1. Official records. FEC filings for federal candidates and committees; state election offices for ballot status, filing deadlines and certified results.
2. The pollster’s own publication. A poll enters the ledger from the pollster’s release, PDF or crosstabs, never from a headline about it. The raw document is kept, content-addressed, and the transcription is checked against it.
3. Wikipedia and other secondary sources, with attribution. Used for biography, portraits and context only, never for numbers, and always attributed on the page with a link and the license the text or image carries (see the data license).

• Adding a candidate. A candidate appears when an official record (an FEC filing or a state ballot listing) shows them as a candidate for a 2026 office. Withdrawn or disqualified candidates stay visible, marked as such, with the record that says so.
• Adding a pollster. A new pollster enters quarantine: visible, excluded from aggregates. It becomes verified when staff confirm identity (the organization exists, has a reachable contact and answers for its work) and that it publishes its methodology. Sponsor disclosure is recorded; partisan-sponsored polls are down-weighted, never hidden. A pollster may appeal a quarantine or removal by email; the appeal and the decision are logged.
• Adding a poll. Only verified pollsters’ polls enter aggregates. A poll that changes the leader, moves an average sharply or dominates the weight is held for human review (thresholds on the methodology page).
• Excluding. A poll is excluded when it cannot be traced to a pollster publication, duplicates a shared sample, or the pollster loses verification. Exclusions are recorded with the reason; the poll stays visible as excluded.
• Correcting. Published releases are immutable. A correction is a new release that supersedes the old one and records what changed; the old release stays accessible, marked superseded. Candidate and pollster facts are corrected in place with the corrected source recorded. See corrections.

Clocks start when the message reaches vugolme@gmail.com. A missed commitment is itself logged on the corrections page.

Vugol Me does not publish election-night results. Poll data is frozen at 18:00 ET on November 2, 2026; no aggregate, Attention score or Vector rating is recomputed until after November 3, and a banner says so on every page until November 5. Corrections during the freeze are limited to factual errors in candidate records and are handled by email within the same 24-hour acknowledgment window.

Anything a candidate or campaign adds to a claimed profile is labeled campaign-provided wherever it appears and is never merged with sourced facts. Internal or campaign-sponsored polls enter the ledger only from a verified pollster, carry the sponsor on the record, and are down-weighted in aggregates.

Subscriptions are the only revenue, and anyone may subscribe on identical terms, including campaigns, parties and committees. That is disclosed in the terms. Whether someone subscribes, or what they pay, has no channel into any editorial decision: not verification, not roster entries, not held-poll decisions, not corrections, not releases. There are no sponsorships, no paid ratings and no advertising. Every published number carries the model version and inputs that produced it, so the decision trail is visible to anyone.