Big Data Poll

§1About

✎ Drafted by AI from the public sources cited. Each sentence links to its source.

Big Data Poll's website says it was founded to set a new standard in survey research and describes live-caller, text-message and online-panel interviewing; its copyright line names PPD Ventures LLC.¹ Its publisher's author page describes Rich Baris as director of Big Data Poll and host of Inside the Numbers with the People's Pundit.² The firm runs a crowdfunded Public Polling Project that lists a donation goal and donors for each poll, which Baris's author page says he founded in 2020.^2,3

Kind

Commercial firm¹

§2Who it works with

Why this matters: Owners, news partners and the firms behind a poll's interviews shape what gets asked, how, and what gets published.

Who paid for its polls

§3Whom it works for

Why this matters: A firm that also works for one party's campaigns can still publish accurate polls, but readers deserve to know.

Doesn’t say whom it works for. The Big Data Poll homepage and Public Polling Project page do not say whether it works for candidates or parties.^1,3

Of its 57 polls listed since the 2024 election, VoteHub flags 0 as paid for by a Democratic-aligned sponsor and 0 by a Republican-aligned sponsor⁴.

Federal campaigns and committees that paid it

From 2023 through 2026, 1 federal committee reported paying Big Data Poll $10,000 for polling, surveys or research^5,6,7,8. By the party each committee reports to the FEC: 0 Democratic, 1 Republican, and 0 none (most PACs and super PACs report none).

§4How its numbers compare with other polls

Why this matters: A firm whose polls run steadily to one side of everyone else's is worth reading alongside others.

Each of its polls since the 2024 election is compared with other pollsters' polls of the same question whose field period ended within 14 days, each other pollster counted once⁴. The figure is the average gap, with a 95% margin. This compares it with other polls, not with the truth: the others can be the ones that are off.

Party margin

D+0.7 (±1.5) across 20 polls of the generic ballot and 2026 races, in 5 contests.

Net approval: Donald Trump

+5.6 points (±1.8) across 17 polls, against other polls of the same question.

D+ means its polls showed Democrats doing better than other polls did; R+, Republicans. A figure from fewer than 5 polls isn't shown.

§5Record against results

Why this matters: The one test that doesn't depend on other polls: how close a firm's final polls came to what voters did.

From FiveThirtyEight's final public data^9,10: general-election polls between a Democrat and a Republican in the last three weeks before each election, compared with the certified result. FiveThirtyEight rated each name polls were published under separately. Across all 8,957 such polls, the average miss was D+0.7, so the relative figure takes out the misses every pollster shared that year.

ABC News closed FiveThirtyEight in March 2025; its data stops at the 2022 elections. 2026 results will be added once states certify them.

§6Documented findings

Why this matters: Only findings by a professional body, a court, a regulator, an aggregator's own published decision, or the pollster itself are listed, each cited to that decision.

• FiveThirtyEight (ABC News), March 2023. FiveThirtyEight's pollster ratings data dated March 2023, published in its public data repository, marks Big Data Poll as banned by 538, with a grade of F. The file's column notes say a firm marked banned is not used in 538's election forecasting models because 538 is concerned it fabricated some poll results, and that banned firms automatically get an F; the data gives no reason specific to Big Data Poll. 538's 2020 ratings file also marks it banned. The ratings 538 published from 2024 on, under a new method, have no banned column and give Big Data Poll a numeric grade.^11,12,13,14
• Silver Bulletin, January 2026. Silver Bulletin's pollster ratings table, as published in January 2026, gives Big Data Poll a grade of F, and its ratings page says banned pollsters automatically receive an F; neither names a reason specific to Big Data Poll.^15,16

§7Its polls

§8What we looked for and didn't find

• No founding year was found; the website's copyright line begins in 2014, which is not a stated founding date.
• The relationship between Big Data Poll and PPD Ventures LLC, named in its copyright line, is not described, so no ownership is listed.
• No about or leadership page exists on its website; leadership rests on a book publisher's author page.
• It describes its voter, consumer and donor files and online panels as coming from industry leaders without naming them, so no fieldwork or panel vendors are listed.
• No standing news partners or clients were found; the 1776 Law Center appears as a poll sponsor in our data, but no page describing a standing arrangement was read.
• Searches found no AAPOR statement, court ruling or filing, regulator action, aggregator statement about excluding or reweighting its polls, or retraction by the firm.