GS Strategy Group

§1About

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

GS Strategy Group describes itself on its website as a research, communications and strategy firm whose work covers brand research, market intelligence, policy and public affairs, and political campaigns and ballot initiatives.¹ Its team page names Greg Strimple as president and says he was earlier a founding partner of Mercury Public Affairs; Strimple and partner Robert Jones are both listed as living in Boise, Idaho.² The Cook Political Report released April 2026 polling of battleground House districts in collaboration with GS Strategy Group and New River Strategies, and Newsweek describes New River Strategies as a Democratic firm and GS Strategy Group as a Republican firm in that polling.^3,4

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.

Published with

Names its polls have been published under, alongside other pollsters or news outlets.

• New River Strategies/GS Strategy Group: New River Strategies · 5 polls listed

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 Republican candidates or groups. Its team page names work for Republican candidates, including current advice to Senator John Cornyn and a 2020 campaign for Representative David Valadao in a seat it says a Republican held, along with partner Robert Jones's earlier staff roles at the National Republican Congressional Committee and the Congressional Leadership Fund, and names no Democratic client; Newsweek also describes it as the Republican firm in the Cook Political Report's 2026 polling. This rests on the clients it names.^2,4

• John Cornyn. Its team page says president Greg Strimple currently advises Senator John Cornyn.²
• David Valadao (2020–now). Its team page says partner Robert Jones, who joined the firm in 2015, led strategy and messaging for Representative David Valadao's 2020 campaign.²

Of its 5 polls listed since the 2024 election, VoteHub flags 0 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, 6 federal committees reported paying GS Strategy Group $263,327 for polling, surveys or research^7,8,9,10. By the party each committee reports to the FEC: 0 Democratic, 3 Republican, and 3 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+1.9 (±1.0) across 5 polls of the generic ballot and 2026 races, in 5 contests.

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.

4 polls of 4 races 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+4.5

Relative to other polls of the same races

D+1.4

Typical size of miss

5.1 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

• No founding year was found on its website.
• The Cook Political Report's own pages describing the Battleground District Project and the 2024 Swing State Project returned HTTP 403, so the party labels for the two firms rest on Newsweek's description; those pages are listed under pointers.
• BSG is named only by its initials in the source read; it may be the firm listed as Benenson Strategy Group in pollsters.json, but no page read confirms this, so no id is linked.
• No fieldwork or panel vendor was named on the pages read.
• One search for AAPOR statements, lawsuits, complaints, retractions and withdrawn polls found none naming the firm; aggregator pages were not searched one by one.