Pollster · Commercial firm

HighGround

Also published as HighGround Inc..

Research draft

Polls since 2024: 1
Latest poll ended: August 18, 2026

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.

HighGround Inc. is a public affairs firm at 830 N. 4th Ave. in Phoenix, Arizona, offering lobbying, social and digital strategy, campaign management, public relations and survey research, according to its website.¹ Its team page names J. Charles Coughlin as chief executive and president and says he founded the company more than 30 years ago as a political consulting firm focused on campaign management, and it names Paul Bentz as senior vice president of research and strategy.² Its survey research page describes live-interviewer telephone surveys of landlines and cell phones in English and Spanish, drawn from voter data, and lists public opinion clients including Arizona State University, the Arizona Supreme Court, Salt River Project, Valleywise Health and 3M.³ Its August 2026 statewide release says HighGround itself sponsored that survey and drew respondents from a voter file it maintains.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.

Founded by

J. Charles Coughlin. Its team page says Chuck Coughlin founded the company more than 30 years ago as a political consulting firm.²

Led by

J. Charles Coughlin. Its team page and its August 2026 release name Chuck Coughlin as president and chief executive.^2,4

§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 successful campaigns page names one party client, the Arizona Republican Party in 1996, and no Democratic party committee; the statewide candidates it lists, among them Jan Brewer, Fife Symington and McCain 2000 in the Arizona presidential primary, are not labeled by party there, and most of the work it lists is ballot measures and local races. This rests on the clients it names; its survey research page says it gives clients impartial findings but does not say whether it works for one party.^3,5

Arizona Republican Party (1996–1996). Its successful campaigns page lists the Arizona Republican Party, marked with the year 1996, among its statewide campaigns.⁵
Jan Brewer for Governor (2010–2010). Its successful campaigns page lists Governor Jan Brewer in 2010, along with her 2002 and 2006 campaigns for secretary of state.⁵

Of its 1 poll 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, 3 federal committees reported paying HighGround $54,375 for polling, surveys or research^7,8,9,10. By the party each committee reports to the FEC: 0 Democratic, 0 Republican, and 3 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: HIGHGROUND, INC..
Committee	Kind	Party it reports	Paid for polling	Between
PHOENIX FIRE FIGHTERS, LOCAL 493, FIRE PAC COMMITTEE	PAC	None reported	$49,375	May 30, 2023 – January 24, 2024
HEALTHCARE FOR ACTION PAC	PAC	None reported	$2,500	March 2, 2026
NATIONAL EMERGENCY MEDICINE POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE / AMERICAN COLLEGE OF EMERGENCY PHYSICIANS	PAC	None reported	$2,500	February 25, 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^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.

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
HighGround Inc.	4	2018–2022	R+3.6	R+1.1	3.6 pts	1.8 of 3

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 1 polls of its we list, newest first.
In the field	Question	Result	With	Paid for by	Sample
August 15–August 18, 2026	Governor · 2026 Arizona	Katie Hobbs 50 · Andy Biggs 34 · Teri Hourihan 2 · Risa Lombardo 1			400 LV

§6What we looked for and didn't find

No founding year is given; its team page says only that the firm was founded more than 30 years ago.
Ownership is not stated; its about page says only that all principals work on its clients.
No standing news partner is named on its site; search results show a 2022 Arizona's Family/HighGround statewide survey, which was not read, so no standing arrangement was established.
Its survey research page does not say whether calls are made in house or by a vendor.
The partisan clients it lists are mostly from 1996 to 2010, and many entries carry no year.
Searches found no AAPOR statement, court ruling, regulator action, aggregator statement about excluding or reweighting its polls, or retraction by the firm.