Impact Research

§1About

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

Impact Research describes itself as a full-service public opinion research and consulting firm and as an ally to progressive causes and campaigns around the world.¹ Its website says it has worked for nearly 30 years to elect Democratic candidates, and its team page lists offices in Washington, D.C., Montgomery, Alabama and Chicago.^2,3 Its website names clients including the AFL-CIO, EMILY's List, Planned Parenthood, the Human Rights Campaign, the Ford and Rockefeller foundations, UNICEF, Microsoft and Airbnb.²

Kind

Works for one party^1,2

§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.

• Fabrizio, Lee & Associates/Impact Research: Fabrizio, Lee & Associates · 21 polls listed
• Impact Research/National Research: National Research · 6 polls listed
• Fabrizio Ward/Impact Research: Fabrizio Ward · 4 polls listed
• Impact Research/BSP Research: BSP Research · 2 polls listed
• Fabrizio Lee & Associates/Impact Research: Fabrizio, Lee & Associates

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. Its website says it has spent nearly 30 years electing Democratic candidates and calls itself an ally of progressive causes and campaigns, and AARP's published poll description and Tony Fabrizio's biography on the Fabrizio, Lee and Associates site both describe it as a Democratic firm.^1,2,4,6

• Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. The Impact Research team page says president Molly Murphy advises the DCCC.³
• Joe Biden 2020 presidential campaign (2020–now). The Impact Research team page says founding partner John Anzalone was chief pollster for Joe Biden's 2020 presidential campaign.³

Of its 41 polls listed since the 2024 election, VoteHub flags 5 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, 83 federal committees reported paying Impact Research $17,929,862 for polling, surveys or research^8,9,10,11. By the party each committee reports to the FEC: 56 Democratic, 0 Republican, 2 another party, and 25 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 once⁷. 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+0.1 (±0.8) across 12 polls of the generic ballot and 2026 races, in 7 contests.

Net approval: Donald Trump

+1.2 points (±3.1) 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^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.

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 founding year was found; its website says only that it has worked for nearly 30 years, and no page read explains any earlier name of the firm.
• No ownership breakdown was found.
• No start date for the Wall Street Journal polling was found, and the Journal's own poll document could not be retrieved, so that partnership rests on the co-pollster's website.
• No fieldwork or panel vendor was named on the pages read; AARP describes live phone and text-to-web interviews without naming a vendor.
• Bylines pairing it with BSP Research and National Research, and sponsors such as House Majority PAC and Third Way 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.