Pollster · Nonprofit

Public Religion Research Institute

AAPOR Transparency Initiative since November 14, 20142Research draft
Polls since 2024
9
Latest poll ended
May 18, 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.

PRRI (Public Religion Research Institute) is a Washington, D.C. nonprofit that says it conducts independent research on religion, culture and politics and does not take positions on or advocate for particular policies.3 Its team page names Melissa Deckman as chief executive and Robert P. Jones as president and founder, and Jones's staff page says he was chief executive from the organization's inception in 2009 until 2022.4,5

Kind
Nonprofit3
Founded
20095

§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.

Polls regularly for

  • Carnegie Corporation of New York (2014–now). The Carnegie Corporation of New York lists six grants to PRRI from 2014 to 2025 under its Strengthening U.S. Democracy program, most of them for research on how religion and values shape attitudes toward immigration.6

Fieldwork or panel by

  • Ipsos. PRRI's June 2026 survey release says 5,140 of its 5,469 respondents came from Ipsos's KnowledgePanel and Ipsos recruited the rest from opt-in panels, and its about page says an Ipsos team handles pre-fieldwork testing and data quality checks.3,7

Founded by

  • Robert P. Jones (2009). PRRI's staff page for Robert P. Jones names him as founder and places the organization's inception in 2009.5

Led by

  • Melissa Deckman. PRRI's team page names Melissa Deckman as chief executive officer.4

Who paid for its polls

Sponsors named on its polls, most polls first8. A party-aligned flag is VoteHub's, per poll.
SponsorPollsBetweenFlagged party-aligned
Carnegie Corporation of New York4September 8, 2025No
Brookings1September 4, 2024No

§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. PRRI's about page describes it as nonpartisan and says it does not take positions on or advocate for particular policies; this rests on its own description.3

Of its 9 polls listed since the 2024 election, VoteHub flags 0 as paid for by a Democratic-aligned sponsor and 0 by a Republican-aligned sponsor8.

§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 data9,10: 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 asPollsElectionsAverage missRelative to other pollsTypical size of miss538's last rating
Public Religion Research Institute12018D+0.5D+1.70.5 pts1.8 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.

§5Its polls

The 10 polls of its we list, newest first.
In the fieldQuestionResultWithPaid for bySample
May 1–May 18, 2026Favorability · Donald TrumpUnfavorable 62 · Favorable 345,469 A
February 10–February 18, 2026Favorability · Donald TrumpUnfavorable 60 · Favorable 36— A
August 15–September 8, 2025Favorability · Donald TrumpUnfavorable 58 · Favorable 40Carnegie Corporation of New York5,543 A
August 15–September 8, 2025Job approval · Donald TrumpDisapprove 56 · Approve 42Carnegie Corporation of New York5,543 A
August 15–September 8, 2025Favorability · JD VanceUnfavorable 52 · Favorable 35Carnegie Corporation of New York5,543 A
August 15–September 8, 2025Generic congressional ballot · 2026Dem 33 · Rep 30Carnegie Corporation of New York5,543 A
February 28–March 20, 2025Favorability · Donald TrumpUnfavorable 56 · Favorable 405,025 A
February 28–March 20, 2025Favorability · JD VanceUnfavorable 50 · Favorable 355,025 A
February 28–March 20, 2025Job approval · Donald TrumpDisapprove 54 · Approve 435,025 A
August 16–September 4, 2024Favorability · JD VanceUnfavorable 46 · Favorable 32Brookings5,325 A

§6What we looked for and didn't find

  • PRRI's about page does not name its funders; the Carnegie grant list is the only funder record read.
  • A PRRI post says its 2025 American Values Survey was released in partnership with the Brookings Institution; whether that is a standing arrangement was not established, so it is not recorded as a relationship.
  • No standing news partner was found.