Change Research

§1About

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

Higher Ground Labs, which lists Change Research in its portfolio, describes it as a public benefit corporation offering online polling for forward-thinking campaigns and causes.² According to Campaigns and Elections, Mike Greenfield co-founded Change Research with Pat Reilly in July 2017, and the company had backing from Higher Ground Labs, which the outlet called a progressive incubator.³ Campaigns and Elections reported in February 2022 that Nicole Bare would become chief executive on July 20, 2022, with Greenfield becoming chair of the board.³

Kind

Commercial firm²

Founded

2017-07³

§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.

Works for Democratic candidates or groups, by its federal filings. From 2023 through 2026, 27 federal committees reporting Democratic affiliation paid it, and none reporting Republican^7,8,9,10. Its own pages could not be read, and the Higher Ground Labs profile describes its clients only as forward-thinking campaigns and causes, without naming a party.²

Of its 37 polls listed since the 2024 election, VoteHub flags 11 as paid for by a Democratic-aligned sponsor and 0 by a Republican-aligned sponsor⁶.

Federal campaigns and committees that paid it

From 2023 through 2026, 46 federal committees reported paying Change Research $854,889 for polling, surveys or research^7,8,9,10. By the party each committee reports to the FEC: 27 Democratic, 0 Republican, 5 another party, and 14 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 once⁶. 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+1.5 (±2.6) across 13 polls of the generic ballot and 2026 races, in 4 contests.

Without a party-aligned sponsor

D+2.6 (±3.2) across 9 polls

Net favorability: Donald Trump

−0.4 points (±2.2) across 5 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^11,12: 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.

§62026 record against the count

Why this matters: How close this pollster's last 2026 polls came to how people voted, measured the way FiveThirtyEight measured earlier elections.

One poll of one race between a Democrat and a Republican, with field periods ending in the 21 days before November 3, 2026, compared with each race's count. Some of those races are still being counted, so these figures use the unofficial count and will change until states certify.

Average miss

R+7.2

Relative to other polls of the same races

Even

Typical size of miss

7.2 pts

Error is the poll's D−R margin minus the count's, as shares of all votes in the race; D+ means it showed Democrats doing better than they did. From fewer than 5 polls, so read it as a few data points, not a pattern.

§7Its polls

§8What we looked for and didn't find

• Its own website returned HTTP 429 (too many requests) on every attempt, so its about, methodology and client pages were not read.
• Current leadership after 2022 was not confirmed.
• No ownership or investor breakdown was found beyond Higher Ground Labs' backing.
• No standing news partner or fieldwork vendor was found.
• Whether Change Research conducted Carolina Forward's earlier editions was not confirmed, and the Northwest Progressive Institute, Talking About Politics, Freedom Project USA and Kentuckians Not Corruption, which appear as sponsors in our data, were not traced to standing relationships.
• Searches found no AAPOR statement, court ruling or filing, regulator action, aggregator statement about excluding or reweighting its polls, or retraction by the firm.