Public Policy Polling

§1About

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

Public Policy Polling (PPP) is a polling firm in Raleigh, North Carolina, whose About page lists Dean Debnam as founder and Tom Jensen as director.¹ The page says Debnam started PPP in 2001 to offer lower-cost surveys, and that it conducts most polls through automated phone calls and text messages, with online surveys and live calls to cell phones as options.¹

Kind

Commercial firm¹

Founded

2001¹

§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.

• Public Policy Polling/Harper Polling: Harper Polling

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 Democratic candidates or groups. Its About page says PPP conducts surveys for politicians, political organizations, unions, consultants and businesses and does not name a party, though its client testimonials include a Democratic legislative caucus committee and the League of Conservation Voters.¹

• North Carolina House Democratic Caucus Campaign Committee. The PPP About page carries a client testimonial from a state representative on behalf of the North Carolina House Democratic Caucus Campaign Committee.¹
• Laura Fine for State Representative (Illinois). The PPP About page carries a client testimonial from the campaign chair for Illinois State Representative Laura Fine.¹

Of its 64 polls listed since the 2024 election, VoteHub flags 59 as paid for by a Democratic-aligned sponsor and 0 by a Republican-aligned sponsor².

Federal campaigns and committees that paid it

From 2023 through 2026, 135 federal committees reported paying Public Policy Polling $2,263,075 for polling, surveys or research^3,4,5,6. By the party each committee reports to the FEC: 90 Democratic, 0 Republican, 6 another party, and 39 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 once². 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+1.7 (±4.6) across 7 polls of the generic ballot and 2026 races, in 5 contests.

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^7,8: 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.

§62026 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.

6 polls of 6 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+0.5

Relative to other polls of the same races

Even

Typical size of miss

2.1 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 6 polls in all.

§7Its polls

§8What we looked for and didn't find

• No ownership or parent company found.
• No standing media partner found.
• No co-pollster or outside fieldwork firm found.
• News reports from 2013 describe PPP saying it withheld a Colorado recall poll; no AAPOR, aggregator or PPP retraction statement about it was found, so it is not recorded as a finding.
• 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.