Pollster · Nonprofit

KFF

Also published as Kaiser Family Foundation.

AAPOR Transparency Initiative since October 31, 20142Research draft
Polls since 2024
2
Latest poll ended
April 19, 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.

KFF, formerly known as the Kaiser Family Foundation, describes itself as an independent source for health policy research, polling and news and as an endowed national nonprofit public charity, based in San Francisco with an office in Washington, D.C.3 Its about page says Drew Altman, its founding president and chief executive, founded the modern organization in 1991, that it is not a foundation despite its former name, and that it has no connection to Kaiser Permanente.3 KFF says it designs, conducts and analyzes its own public opinion research, and its public opinion page lists survey series run with the Associated Press, CNN, The New York Times, NPR and The Washington Post.4

Kind
Nonprofit3
Founded
19913

§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.

News partners

  • The Washington Post (1995–now). Drew Altman wrote in July 2026 that KFF has conducted 37 large polling projects with The Washington Post since the partnership began in 1995, early ones as a three-way project with Robert Blendon of Harvard, and KFF lists KFF/Washington Post surveys among its series.4,5

Fieldwork or panel by

  • SSRS. KFF's January and April 2026 tracking poll methodologies say most respondents were reached through the SSRS Opinion Panel, a probability-based panel, with the rest from a prepaid cell phone sample, and its public opinion page says SSRS conducted its 2026 voter poll.4,6,7

Led by

  • Drew Altman (1991–now). The KFF about page names Drew Altman as founding president and chief executive of the modern organization, founded in 1991.3

§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. KFF's about and public opinion pages call it independent and a nonprofit public charity but do not say whether it works for candidates or parties, and they name no campaign or party clients.3,4

Of its 2 polls listed since the 2024 election, VoteHub flags 0 as paid for by a Democratic-aligned sponsor and 0 by a Republican-aligned sponsor8.

§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 data9,10: 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 asPollsElectionsAverage missRelative to other pollsTypical size of miss538's last rating
KFF0————2.5 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 3 polls of its we list, newest first.
In the fieldQuestionResultWithPaid for bySample
April 14–April 19, 2026Generic congressional ballot · 2026Dem 43 · Rep 341,107 RV
January 13–January 20, 2026Generic congressional ballot · 2026Dem 49 · Rep 421,141 RV
May 9–May 19, 2023Job approval · Supreme CourtDisapprove 58 · Approve 411,674 A

§6What we looked for and didn't find

  • The about page dates the modern organization to 1991 but does not give the founding year of the earlier Kaiser Family Foundation.
  • No start or end dates were found for KFF's polling series with the Associated Press, CNN, The New York Times, NPR or the Los Angeles Times, so only The Washington Post is recorded as a standing partner.
  • Beyond the correction recorded, searches found no AAPOR statement, court ruling, regulator action, aggregator statement about excluding or reweighting its polls, or retraction; an opinion piece criticizing a 2019 question is listed under pointers.