Pollster · Commercial firm

EMC Research

Research draft

Polls since 2024: 2
Latest poll ended: February 22, 2026
Record vs. results, relative: D+2.9

Polls from the VoteHub polling API, used under CC BY 4.0. Each result links to the pollster's or sponsor's own release. Imported once a day; a poll VoteHub later changes keeps its earlier version on record here.

§1About

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

EMC Research describes itself on its website as a public opinion research and consulting firm working since 1989, and as a women-owned firm with national reach.^1,2 Its team page names Molly O'Shaughnessy as chief executive and president.³ According to Daily Research News Online, EMC Research merged in January 2016 with Hamilton Campaigns, an Orlando firm founded in 1964, under the EMC name; the report named Alex Evans as EMC's president and listed offices in Columbus, Fernandina Beach, Irving, Oakland, Portland, Seattle and Washington, D.C.⁴ A March 10, 2026 memo released by the Ohio Environmental Council names EMC Research as the firm behind an online survey of 2,000 registered Ohio voters fielded in February 2026.⁵

Kind: Commercial firm¹
Founded: 1989^1,4

§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.

Polls regularly for

Justice Democrats. Its campaign and voter research page shows Justice Democrats among its client logos.⁶

Led by

Molly O'Shaughnessy. Its team page names Molly O'Shaughnessy as chief executive and president.³

Who paid for its polls

Sponsors named on its polls, most polls first⁷. A party-aligned flag is VoteHub's, per poll.
Sponsor	Polls	Between	Flagged party-aligned
Ohio Environmental Council	2	February 22, 2026	No

§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. Its campaign and voter research page shows client logos including the California Democratic Party, Justice Democrats and candidates who ran as Democrats, among them Tom Carper, Bill Nelson, Alma Adams, Mark Takano and Stephanie Murphy; none of the clients shown is a Republican committee or candidate. This rests on the clients it names; the page itself does not describe the firm as working for one party.⁶

California Democratic Party. Its campaign and voter research page shows the California Democratic Party among its client logos.⁶
Tom Carper. Its campaign and voter research page shows Tom Carper among its client logos.⁶
Bill Nelson. Its campaign and voter research page shows Bill Nelson among its client logos.⁶
Alma Adams. Its campaign and voter research page shows Alma Adams among its client logos.⁶

Of its 2 polls listed since the 2024 election, VoteHub flags 0 as paid for by a Democratic-aligned sponsor and 0 by a Republican-aligned sponsor⁷.

Federal campaigns and committees that paid it

From 2023 through 2026, 19 federal committees reported paying EMC Research $1,075,102 for polling, surveys or research^8,9,10,11. By the party each committee reports to the FEC: 14 Democratic, 0 Republican, and 5 none (most PACs and super PACs report none).

The largest payers, by amount paid for polling, surveys or research. Only federal committees report to the FEC; state and local campaigns, work paid through another consultant, and polling billed as consulting are not here. Matched by the payee name on the filing: EMC RESEARCH; EMC RESEARCH INC; EMC RESEARCH INC.; EMC RESEARCH, INC; ….
Committee	Kind	Party it reports	Paid for polling	Between
DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ FOR CONGRESS	House campaign	Democratic	$190,350	July 9, 2024 – July 1, 2026
ADAM GRAY FOR CONGRESS	House campaign	Democratic	$134,002	May 28, 2024 – June 23, 2026
DCCC	Party committee	Democratic	$132,833	July 12, 2024 – July 24, 2026
SCOTT WIENER FOR CONGRESS	House campaign	Democratic	$88,800	October 6, 2025 – April 16, 2026
MELISSA HERNANDEZ FOR CONGRESS	House campaign	Democratic	$70,500	May 28, 2026 – August 17, 2026
BLUE DOG POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE	PAC	None reported	$54,501	October 16, 2024 – July 22, 2026
FAMILIES FOR AN AFFORDABLE SAN FRANCISCO	Super PAC	None reported	$51,100	May 5, 2026 – June 29, 2026
MIKE FEUER FOR CONGRESS	House campaign	Democratic	$49,400	October 18, 2023 – November 22, 2023
EVAN LOW FOR CONGRESS	House campaign	Democratic	$45,600	January 2, 2024
MARK TAKANO FOR CONGRESS	House campaign	Democratic	$43,600	August 16, 2024
LUTZ FOR CONGRESS	House campaign	Democratic	$40,000	November 9, 2023
NEW DEMOCRAT COALITION ACTION FUND	PAC	None reported	$31,667	October 16, 2024 – April 21, 2026

§4Record 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^12,13: 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.

Error is the poll's D−R margin minus the result's; D+ means it showed Democrats doing better than they did.
Published as	Polls	Elections	Average miss	Relative to other polls	Typical size of miss	538's last rating
EMC Research	12	2000–2020	D+5.0	D+2.9	6.8 pts	0.9 of 3 · 1% partisan work

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

§5Its polls

The 2 polls of its we list, newest first.
In the field	Question	Result	With	Paid for by	Sample
February 10–February 22, 2026	U.S. Senate · 2026 Ohio	Sherrod Brown 51 · Jon Husted 47		Ohio Environmental Council	1,343 LV
February 10–February 22, 2026	Governor · 2026 Ohio	Amy Acton 53 · Vivek Ramaswamy 43		Ohio Environmental Council	1,343 LV

§6What we looked for and didn't find

Its website names no founder; the 2016 news report names Alex Evans as president, and no current ownership details were found beyond its women-owned description.
Its website lists no current office locations; the office list is from the 2016 news report.
Its website names no news outlet partners and no fieldwork or panel vendors.
The Ohio Environmental Council survey is a single sponsored poll; no standing arrangement with the council was found.
Its website refused direct downloads (a Cloudflare block), so the client logos were read through a text extraction of the page, and some logos without labels were not counted.
Searches found no AAPOR statement, court ruling or filing, regulator action, aggregator statement about excluding or reweighting its polls, or retraction by the firm.