Shaw & Co. Research

§1About

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

Shaw & Co. Research, which Fox News and the Reagan Institute list as Shaw & Company Research, is the firm they credit together with Beacon Research for the Fox News Poll and the Reagan National Defense Survey.^1,2,3 The Reagan Institute memo crediting the firm is signed by Daron Shaw, whom the University of Texas at Austin lists as a government professor there and as co-director of the Fox News Poll since 2011.^3,4

§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.

• Beacon Research/Shaw & Co. Research: Beacon Research · 105 polls listed
• BSP Research/Shaw & Company Research: BSP Research

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 Republican candidates or groups. No statement by the firm itself was found. Fox News methodology statements identify it as the Republican partner, marked R, in the Fox News Poll, the Reagan Institute marks it the same way, and the Beacon Research site calls it a Republican firm.^2,3,6

Of its 70 polls listed since the 2024 election, VoteHub flags 0 as paid for by a Democratic-aligned sponsor and 0 by a Republican-aligned sponsor⁷.

§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 once⁷. 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+0.1 (±1.4) across 22 polls of the generic ballot and 2026 races, in 12 contests.

Net approval: Donald Trump

−1.1 points (±1.2) across 13 polls, against other polls of the same question.

Net favorability: Donald Trump

−4.1 points (±1.6) across 5 polls, against other polls of the same question.

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^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.

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.

4 polls of 4 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+7.5

Relative to other polls of the same races

R+1.6

Typical size of miss

7.6 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.

§7Its polls

§8What we looked for and didn't find

• No website for the firm found, so there is no statement from the firm itself about what it is, where it is based, who leads it, when it was founded or whom it works for.
• Kind and founding year left empty: no source describes the structure of the firm beyond Beacon Research and Fox News calling it a firm.
• Texas business registry records were not searched.
• A University of Texas LBJ School page that search results said names Shaw & Company Research as a partner on a 2022 LBJ/Univision poll refused our request (HTTP 403), so that relationship is not recorded.
• No campaign or party clients found.
• 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.