The Mellman Group

§1Whom 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, by its federal filings. From 2023 through 2026, 9 federal committees reporting Democratic affiliation paid it, and none reporting Republican^1,2,3,4.

Federal campaigns and committees that paid it

From 2023 through 2026, 14 federal committees reported paying The Mellman Group $1,286,348 for polling, surveys or research^1,2,3,4. By the party each committee reports to the FEC: 9 Democratic, 0 Republican, and 5 none (most PACs and super PACs report none).

§2Record 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.

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