Pollster

Neighborhood Research and Media

Research draft

Polls since 2024: 2
Latest poll ended: October 6, 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.

According to the New Jersey Globe, Neighborhood Research and Media is run by Rick Shaftan, whom the outlet describes as a conservative political consultant, and released an October 2025 New Jersey governor poll of 311 definite or very likely voters by landline and cell phone, fielded October 6 to 9.¹ Colorado Politics described Shaftan in September 2024 as a Republican political consultant and pollster living in Rodanthe, North Carolina.²

§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.

Led by

Rick Shaftan. According to the New Jersey Globe, Rick Shaftan runs Neighborhood Research and Media.¹

§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. No website or self-description of the firm was found, and no page read names its clients. News outlets describe Shaftan as a conservative or Republican consultant, which is not one of the bases this field rests on.^1,2

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 sponsor³.

Federal campaigns and committees that paid it

From 2023 through 2026, 4 federal committees reported paying Neighborhood Research and Media $209,077 for polling, surveys or research^4,5,6,7. By the party each committee reports to the FEC: 0 Democratic, 1 Republican, and 3 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: NEIGHBORHOOD RESEARCH & MEDIA; NEIGHBORHOOD RESEARCH AND MEDIA.
Committee	Kind	Party it reports	Paid for polling	Between
HOUSE FREEDOM ACTION	Super PAC	None reported	$117,019	September 13, 2024 – September 18, 2025
CHAMPIONS OF FREEDOM PAC	Super PAC	None reported	$63,251	May 20, 2024 – June 7, 2024
KATHLEEN WINN FOR CONGRESS	House campaign	Republican	$20,000	April 28, 2024 – May 22, 2024
TAXPAYERS AGAINST WOKENESS	Super PAC	None reported	$8,807	February 27, 2024

§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 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.

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
Neighborhood Research and Media	2	2009	R+13.8	R+4.9	13.8 pts	1.3 of 3 · 0% 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.

§5Its polls

The 2 polls of its we list, newest first.
In the field	Question	Result	With	Paid for by	Sample
October 1–October 6, 2026	U.S. House · 2026 NC-01	Don Davis 51 · Laurie Buckhout 41			303 LV
October 6–October 9, 2025	Governor · 2025 New Jersey	Mikie Sherrill 44 · Jack Ciattarelli 44			311 LV

§6What we looked for and didn't find

No website for the firm was found; the sample releases are posts on X, which require a login and were not read.
Kind, founding year, location and ownership of the firm were not found.
No standing news partner, non-news client, co-pollster or fieldwork vendor was found.
Campaign roles for Shaftan personally (for example in Steve Lonegan's and Corey Stewart's campaigns) appear only in blogs and secondary news and are listed under pointers, not as firm clients.
Searches found no AAPOR statement, court ruling, regulator action, aggregator statement about excluding or reweighting its polls, or retraction by the firm.