McLaughlin & Associates

§1About

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

McLaughlin & Associates is a survey research and strategic consulting firm with offices in Blauvelt, New York, and Alexandria, Virginia, according to its website.^1,2 Its About page lists John McLaughlin as CEO and partner and Jim McLaughlin as president and partner, and says the firm also does media planning and buying.²

Kind

Works for one party²

§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/McLaughlin & Associates: 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 Republican candidates or groups. Its About page describes Jim McLaughlin as one of two Republican pollsters named to a Roll Call list and lists Republican candidates and party committees among its political clients.²

• Donald J. Trump (2016–now). Its About page says John McLaughlin worked as an adviser and pollster for Donald Trump in 2016, from the primaries through Election Day.²
• Republican National Committee. Its About page lists the Republican National Committee among clients its media director has advised.²
• National Republican Congressional Committee. Its About page lists the NRCC among clients its media director has advised and says executive director Keith Zeig has worked closely with the NRCC.²
• National Republican Senatorial Committee. Its About page lists the NRSC among clients its media director has advised.²

Of its 63 polls listed since the 2024 election, VoteHub flags 0 as paid for by a Democratic-aligned sponsor and 15 by a Republican-aligned sponsor³.

Federal campaigns and committees that paid it

From 2023 through 2026, 45 federal committees reported paying McLaughlin & Associates $8,072,236 for polling, surveys or research^4,5,6,7. By the party each committee reports to the FEC: 0 Democratic, 34 Republican, and 11 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 once³. 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+4.0 (±1.1) across 21 polls of the generic ballot and 2026 races, in 1 contest.

Without a party-aligned sponsor

R+4.9 (±1.3) across 14 polls

When paid for by a Republican-aligned sponsor

R+2.4 (±1.4) across 7 polls

Net approval: Donald Trump

+6.3 points (±3.0) across 10 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.

§6Its polls

§7What we looked for and didn't find

• No founding year found on its website.
• No ownership or parent company found.
• Its site republishes Newsmax columns by John and Jim McLaughlin that report its national surveys; no announcement of a standing polling partnership with Newsmax was found, so none is recorded.
• No co-pollster or fieldwork vendor found.
• A search result pointed to a Wikipedia talk page saying FiveThirtyEight and Split Ticket had excluded a pollster from their averages; which pollster was meant could not be confirmed and FiveThirtyEight pages could not be read, so nothing is recorded.
• Findings search: web searches combining the firm name with AAPOR, FiveThirtyEight, Silver Bulletin, exclusion and retraction terms found nothing that fits the finding rules; the Silver Bulletin January 2026 ratings page names no banned pollsters; FiveThirtyEight pages now redirect to ABC News and could not be read; RealClearPolitics, The New York Times, Cook Political Report, Decision Desk HQ and VoteHub policy pages were not reviewed one by one.
• Court records: a web search limited to CourtListener and Justia found no case naming the firm; PACER and state court dockets were not searched.