Lester & Associates: polls, partners and record

§1Who 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.

Global Strategy Group/Lester & Associates: Global Strategy Group

§2Whom 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.

Federal campaigns and committees that paid it

From 2023 through 2026, 4 federal committees reported paying Lester & Associates $98,940 for polling, surveys or research^1,2,3,4. By the party each committee reports to the FEC: 4 Democratic, 0 Republican, and 0 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: LESTER & ASSOCIATES; LESTER AND ASSOCIATES.
Committee	Kind	Party it reports	Paid for polling	Between
JESSEJACKSONJRFORCONGRESS.COM	House campaign	Democratic	$42,000	July 31, 2025 – February 27, 2026
FRIENDS OF JIM CLYBURN	House campaign	Democratic	$24,800	October 24, 2025
SANFORD BISHOP FOR CONGRESS	House campaign	Democratic	$19,640	September 24, 2024
COMMITTEE TO ELECT SHOMARI FIGURES FOR CONGRESS	House campaign	Democratic	$12,500	July 9, 2024

§3Record 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^5,6: 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
Lester & Associates	0	—	—	—	—	1.3 of 3 · 1% partisan work

ABC News closed FiveThirtyEight in March 2025; its data stops at the 2022 elections. 2026 results will be added once states certify them.