An independent candidate who claimed she was in with a “strong chance” of winning Julie Bishop’s seat of Curtin is facing calls to quit the race after she released a fake poll claiming the Liberal Party was facing a 20 per cent swing against it in the seat.

On Saturday, The Weekend West reported a ReachTEL report commissioned by candidate Louise Stewart showed the Liberals faced a 20 per cent swing in the blue-ribbon seat.

According to a pdf document of the polling provided by Ms Stewart to The Weekend West, the research had been conducted by UComms on behalf of ReachTEL with 819 voters in the seat. However, Ms Stewart is now facing calls to pull out from the race as The West Australian can today reveal that UComms have stated they never conducted the research that Ms Stewart’s campaign claimed took place on April 17 and 18.

ReachTEL founder and UComms co-owner James Stewart said the company had not done any Curtin-specific research this election.

“We don’t have any records for a poll conducted in that electorate on those dates,” Mr Stewart said.

“While there’s a very small part of me that’s flattered they’re trying to leverage one of my old brands to get credibility in the marketplace, the vast majority of me is very concerned about the fact we have got a doctored poll out there in the marketplace and they think they can get away with it.

“It would be very interesting to get down to the bottom of this, someone obviously has got the ability to doctor up a poll and what’s ReachTEL today is a Newspoll tomorrow.”

Mr Stewart, who sold ReachTEL in 2015, said ReachTEL was not conducting political polling in 2019 and UComms had taken over its work. Mr Stewart also works as a current consultant for ReachTEL.

Finance Minister Mathias Cormann blasted the fake poll.

“The independent candidate must fully disclose her involvement in this deception. If she can’t she should pull out,” Senator Cormann said. “Celia Hammond is an outstanding, highly regarded candidate,” he said.

“She is getting a fantastic response from people right across Curtin who recognise what a great job she could do for the people of Curtin as part of the Liberal team from Western Australia.”

In a statement released via her media manager, Ms Stewart claimed the poll had been supplied by a third party.

She had previously told The West Australian that she commissioned the poll. “The Louise Stewart campaign has committed two polls from ReachTEL/Ucomms before election day,” Ms Stewart said.

“The campaign was supplied with polling data from a third party, the results of which matched our experience on the ground in Curtin.

“The campaign accepted those results in good faith.

“We are working with Reach-TEL to ascertain if and how an error has occurred.”

She did not respond to questions on who was the “third party” who forwarded the email.