Hart Research Associates

§1About

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

Hart Research describes itself as a public opinion research firm based in Washington, D.C. whose clients include candidates for public office, advocacy organizations, trade associations, foundations and private industry.^1,2 Its history page says Peter D. Hart founded the firm in 1971, Geoff Garin became president in 1999, and after Hart retired following the 2020 election the firm passed to longtime partner Fred Yang, whom its team page lists as chief executive.^2,3 The same page refers to the firm's progressive values and to Democratic wins.²

Kind

Commercial firm¹

Founded

1971²

§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.

• Hart Research Associates/Public Opinion Strategies: Public Opinion Strategies · 32 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 Democratic candidates or groups. Hart Research's history page calls the firm the Democratic pollster for the bipartisan NBC News Poll and refers to its progressive values, and Public Opinion Strategies' description of the NBC News Poll identifies Hart as that poll's Democratic pollster.^2,4

Of its 38 polls listed since the 2024 election, VoteHub flags 9 as paid for by a Democratic-aligned sponsor and 0 by a Republican-aligned sponsor⁵.

Federal campaigns and committees that paid it

From 2023 through 2026, 41 federal committees reported paying Hart Research Associates $7,760,953 for polling, surveys or research^6,7,8,9. By the party each committee reports to the FEC: 25 Democratic, 0 Republican, and 16 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 once⁵. 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+0.2 (±3.2) across 12 polls of the generic ballot and 2026 races, in 3 contests.

Without a party-aligned sponsor

R+1.0 (±3.0) across 10 polls

Net approval: Donald Trump

+1.0 points (±1.2) across 11 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^10,11: 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.

§6Its polls

§7What we looked for and didn't find

• No ownership breakdown was found.
• The pages read name no individual campaign or party clients; its political, nonprofit and private-sector work pages were not read in this pass.
• The pages read do not mention The Wall Street Journal's past role in the NBC poll or name any fieldwork vendor.
• Senate Majority PAC, House Majority PAC, Forward Montana and other 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.