Pollster · Commercial firm

Pan Atlantic Research

Also published as Pan Atlantic SMS Group.

Research draft

Polls since 2024: 6
Latest poll ended: May 18, 2026
Record vs. results, relative: D+0.6

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.

Pan Atlantic Research describes itself as an independent marketing research and consulting firm based in Portland, Maine, in business since 1985.^1,2 Its May 2026 Omnibus Poll report names Jason Edes as president and says it was the 69th in its series of statewide polls and was not commissioned or paid for by any client.² Its Who We Are page says it began as a business-to-business marketing consulting firm and in 1989 bought Strategic Marketing Services, a New England research firm founded in 1982 by Guy Gannett Publishing Company; Maine Public referred to the firm in 2014 as Pan Atlantic SMS, with Patrick Murphy as president.^3,4

Kind: Commercial firm^1,3
Founded: 1985^1,3

§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.

Owns

Strategic Marketing Services (SMS) (1989–now). Its Who We Are page says it bought Strategic Marketing Services, a New England research firm, in 1989.³

Fieldwork or panel by

Dynata (2026–now). Its May 2026 Omnibus Poll report says respondents were recruited online through a panel provided by its vendor partner Dynata.²

Led by

Jason Edes. Its May 2026 Omnibus Poll report names Jason Edes as president.²

Who paid for its polls

Sponsors named on its polls, most polls first⁵. A party-aligned flag is VoteHub's, per poll.
Sponsor	Polls	Between	Flagged party-aligned
Joe Baldacci	1	December 7, 2025	Democratic-aligned sponsor (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. Its Clients and Markets page lists political organizations and candidates among the markets it serves but names no party or campaign, and the pages read do not say which party's candidates it works for; the one campaign client found, Democratic state Senator Joe Baldacci, comes from a news report.^6,7

Joe Baldacci (2025–now). According to Punchbowl News, Democratic state Senator Joe Baldacci paid for a Pan Atlantic poll of Maine's 2nd Congressional District fielded in late November and early December 2025.⁷

Of its 6 polls listed since the 2024 election, VoteHub flags 1 as paid for by a Democratic-aligned sponsor and 0 by a Republican-aligned sponsor⁵.

Federal campaigns and committees that paid it

From 2023 through 2026, 1 federal committee reported paying Pan Atlantic Research $3,000 for polling, surveys or research^8,9,10,11. By the party each committee reports to the FEC: 1 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: PAN ATLANTIC RESEARCH.
Committee	Kind	Party it reports	Paid for polling	Between
JOE BALDACCI FOR CONGRESS	House campaign	Democratic	$3,000	June 9, 2026

§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^12,13: 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
Pan Atlantic Research	17	2000–2014	D+4.3	D+0.6	7.5 pts	2.1 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.

§5Documented findings

Why this matters: Only findings by a professional body, a court, a regulator, an aggregator's own published decision, or the pollster itself are listed, each cited to that decision.

Pan Atlantic SMS Group, October 28, 2014. According to Maine Public, the firm, then called Pan Atlantic SMS, withdrew the bear-hunting referendum results from its October 2014 Maine election poll after learning that the question used the wording of a 2004 referendum rather than the question on the 2014 ballot, and its president, Patrick Murphy, said the older wording had been used in earlier surveys before the 2014 question was final. The report describes only that portion of the poll as withdrawn.⁴

§6Its polls

The 6 polls of its we list, newest first.
In the field	Question	Result	Paid for by	Sample
May 8–May 18, 2026	U.S. Senate · 2026 Maine	Graham Platner 48 · Susan Collins 41		827 LV
February 13–March 2, 2026	U.S. Senate · 2026 Maine	Graham Platner 44 · Susan Collins 40		810 LV
February 13–March 2, 2026	U.S. Senate · 2026 Maine	Susan Collins 44 · Janet Mills 44		810 LV
November 29–December 7, 2025	U.S. Senate · 2026 Maine	Susan Collins 43 · Janet Mills 43		820 LV
November 29–December 7, 2025	U.S. Senate · 2026 Maine	Graham Platner 43 · Susan Collins 42		820 LV
November 29–December 7, 2025	U.S. House · 2026 ME-02	Paul LePage 44 · Joe Baldacci 43	Joe BaldacciDemocratic-aligned sponsor	387 LV

§7What we looked for and didn't find

The firm's own statement withdrawing the 2014 bear-hunting results was not found, so the retraction rests on Maine Public's report.
No standing news partner was found; its Omnibus reports say they are meant for its clients, the media and the public.
The pages read do not say who owns the firm or when Edes succeeded Murphy as president.
Its current site does not use the name Pan Atlantic SMS Group, and when it stopped using that name was not found.
Beyond the finding recorded, a web search for lawsuits, complaints, AAPOR actions, errors and retractions involving the firm found nothing further, and AAPOR's statements list (five pages, read on 2026-11-06) names none; targeted searches for regulator actions and aggregator statements could not be run after the session's web search budget ran out.