Pollfinity

§1About

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

Pollfinity Research describes itself as an independent, self-funded public opinion research organization, organized as a California limited liability company in March 2026, that fields its surveys by text message to web.¹ Its about page names Lars Mapstead, a technology entrepreneur, as founder and research director, and the disclosures on its polls say he owns and funds it, ran for president as a Libertarian in 2024, and funds ballot-access advocacy groups.^1,2,3 A candidate statement from Mapstead, published by the Santa Cruz County elections office for the June 2026 primary, says he was seeking to represent the 19th District in Washington.⁴ Its October 2026 Texas poll reports 297 respondents who started the survey, drawn from a 40,000-record voter-file sample, and says it weighted to the 2022 midterm electorate and to recalled 2024 and 2022 votes.³

Kind

Commercial firm¹

Founded

2026¹

§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.

§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.

Says it does no work for parties or candidates. Its website calls it independent and non-partisan and says it takes no payment from candidates, campaigns, PACs, parties or advocacy groups; the same pages disclose its owner's 2024 Libertarian presidential run.^1,3

Of its 3 polls listed since the 2024 election, VoteHub flags 0 as paid for by a Democratic-aligned sponsor and 0 by a Republican-aligned sponsor⁵.

§42026 record against the count

Why this matters: How close this pollster's last 2026 polls came to how people voted, measured the way FiveThirtyEight measured earlier elections.

2 polls of 2 races between a Democrat and a Republican, with field periods ending in the 21 days before November 3, 2026, compared with each race's count. Some of those races are still being counted, so these figures use the unofficial count and will change until states certify.

Average miss

R+6.6

Relative to other polls of the same races

D+2.7

Typical size of miss

6.6 pts

Error is the poll's D−R margin minus the count's, as shares of all votes in the race; D+ means it showed Democrats doing better than they did. From fewer than 5 polls, so read it as a few data points, not a pattern.

§5Its polls

§6What we looked for and didn't find

• Its poll pages name no texting, sample or voter-file vendor.
• No news partner or client was found; its about page says it does not currently offer commissioned polling.
• Its methodology page was not read.
• The result of Mapstead's June 2026 congressional primary was not checked.
• Searches found no AAPOR statement, court ruling or filing, regulator action, aggregator statement about excluding or reweighting its polls, or retraction by the firm.
• The Silver Bulletin ratings table and the VoteHub methodology pages were not read, so aggregator checks rest on searches of published text.