InsiderAdvantage

§1About

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

InsiderAdvantage describes itself on its website as a company with media products that include national public opinion polling and print and online publications, the best known being the Georgia political and business magazine James Magazine.¹ Its about page gives Atlanta, Georgia addresses, says its polling operations are in Florida, says it began surveying public opinion in 2000, and says it has polled for ABC, NBC and Fox affiliates as well as Politico and Newsmax.¹ The James Magazine staff page lists Matt Towery as chairman and Phil Kent as chief executive and publisher, and a biography of Towery at the law firm Hall Booth Smith says he has served as chief executive of InsiderAdvantage and as its pollster for news organizations including Politico and Newsmax.^2,3 The same biography says Towery was the Republican nominee for lieutenant governor of Georgia in 1990, served in the Georgia House of Representatives from 1992 to 1997, and chaired Speaker Newt Gingrich's political organization in the 1990s.³ According to FOX 5 Atlanta, InsiderAdvantage conducted a Georgia survey published November 2, 2026 for James Magazine and said it would be the last public poll the firm conducts, as co-founder and chairman Matt Towery ends a 26-year polling career.⁴

Kind

Commercial firm¹

Founded

2000¹

§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.

• Trafalgar Group/InsiderAdvantage: Trafalgar Group · 8 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.

Doesn’t say whom it works for. The InsiderAdvantage about page does not say whether the firm works for candidates or parties.¹

Of its 43 polls listed since the 2024 election, VoteHub flags 0 as paid for by a Democratic-aligned sponsor and 2 by a Republican-aligned sponsor⁷.

§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

R+2.1 (±1.2) across 15 polls of the generic ballot and 2026 races, in 11 contests.

Net approval: Donald Trump

+13.9 points (±2.3) across 15 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^8,9: 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.

6 polls of 5 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+8.7

Relative to other polls of the same races

R+1.0

Typical size of miss

8.7 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 6 polls in all.

§7Its polls

§8What we looked for and didn't find

• No incorporation year was found; the about page says the firm began polling in 2000, while the James Magazine page says it has polled for media since 2001.
• No ownership breakdown was found beyond Towery's role as co-founder and chairman.
• No standing news partnership with dates was found: FOX 5 Atlanta reported several 2026 InsiderAdvantage Georgia polls, but the articles read do not say FOX 5 commissioned them, and the about page lists Politico, Newsmax and TV affiliates without dates.
• No fieldwork or panel vendor was named; FOX 5 Atlanta describes its final survey as a mixed-mode text and panel design.
• No statement of how InsiderAdvantage and Trafalgar Group split work on joint surveys, or when the arrangement began, was found on either firm's pages read.
• Searches found no AAPOR statement, court ruling or filing, regulator action, aggregator statement about excluding or reweighting its polls, or retraction by the firm.