Pollster · Commercial firm

Slingshot Strategies

Research draft

Polls since 2024: 14
Latest poll ended: October 18, 2026
House effect vs. other polls: D+0.1

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.

Slingshot Strategies describes itself as a full-service political consulting firm based in Brooklyn, New York, providing communications, polling and advisory work to candidates, organizations and causes that reflect its values.¹ Its About page names Evan Roth Smith and Sam Haass as founding partners, with Haass as chief executive.¹ Its homepage client list includes the Texas Democratic Party, Data for Progress, RealClearPolitics, Tangle News, unions, real estate and transit groups, and candidates for Congress and New York offices.²

Kind: Commercial firm¹

§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

Texas Public Opinion Research. Slingshot's homepage says it built Texas Public Opinion Research from scratch; that project calls itself a nonpartisan polling initiative, but its August 2026 release does not name who conducted the poll.^2,3
Blueprint (2023–now). Slingshot says it ran Blueprint's polling, message testing and press strategy for the 2024 cycle, and according to The American Prospect in November 2023, Blueprint's polling was overseen by Slingshot.^2,4

Fieldwork or panel by

YouGov (2023–now). According to The American Prospect, the Blueprint polling that Slingshot oversaw in 2023 was conducted by YouGov.⁴

Founded by

Evan Roth Smith. The Slingshot About page lists Evan Roth Smith as a founding partner.¹
Sam Haass. The Slingshot About page lists Sam Haass as a founding partner.¹

Led by

Sam Haass. The Slingshot About page names Sam Haass as chief executive.¹

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
Texas Public Opinion Research	14	August 29, 2025 – October 18, 2026	Democratic-aligned sponsor (1)
Blueprint	2	July 22, 2024 – August 4, 2024	Democratic-aligned sponsor (2)

§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. The Slingshot homepage client list names the Texas Democratic Party and the Agave Democratic Infrastructure Fund and names no Republican party organization; its About page says it works for candidates and causes that reflect its values without naming a party.^1,2

Texas Democratic Party. The Slingshot homepage lists the Texas Democratic Party among its clients.²

Of its 14 polls listed since the 2024 election, VoteHub flags 3 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 Slingshot Strategies $38,500 for polling, surveys or research^6,7,8,9. By the party each committee reports to the FEC: 0 Democratic, 0 Republican, and 1 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: SLINGSHOT STRATEGIES LLC.
Committee	Kind	Party it reports	Paid for polling	Between
FREE AND FAIR PAC, INC.	Super PAC	None reported	$38,500	April 14, 2025

§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 once⁵. 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: D+0.1 (±1.3) across 10 polls of the generic ballot and 2026 races, in 2 contests.
Without a party-aligned sponsor: Even (±1.5) across 9 polls

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^10,11: 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
Slingshot Strategies	2	2018–2022	D+4.0	D+1.6	5.3 pts	1.4 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.

§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.

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+9.1
Relative to other polls of the same races: D+0.2
Typical size of miss: 9.1 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 fewer than 5 polls, so read it as a few data points, not a pattern.

§7Its polls

The 16 polls of its we list, newest first.
In the field	Question	Result	Paid for by	Sample
October 15–October 18, 2026	Governor · 2026 Texas	Greg Abbott 51 · Gina Hinojosa 48 · Pat Dixon 1		969 LV
October 15–October 18, 2026	U.S. Senate · 2026 Texas	James Talarico 51 · Ken Paxton 47 · Ted Brown 2		969 LV
September 19–September 22, 2026	Governor · 2026 Texas	Greg Abbott 50 · Gina Hinojosa 46 · Pat Dixon 2		1,007 LV
September 19–September 22, 2026	U.S. Senate · 2026 Texas	James Talarico 49 · Ken Paxton 45 · Ted Brown 3		1,007 LV
August 21–August 24, 2026	U.S. Senate · 2026 Texas	James Talarico 48 · Ken Paxton 42 · Ted Brown 1		1,000 LV
August 21–August 24, 2026	Governor · 2026 Texas	Greg Abbott 49 · Gina Hinojosa 42 · Pat Dixon 1 · Jenn Mack Raphoon 1		1,000 LV
July 15–July 17, 2026	U.S. Senate · 2026 Texas	James Talarico 45 · Ken Paxton 40 · Ted Brown 1		1,048 LV
July 15–July 17, 2026	Governor · 2026 Texas	Greg Abbott 45 · Gina Hinojosa 42 · Pat Dixon 1 · Jenn Mack Raphoon 1		1,048 LV
May 27–May 28, 2026	U.S. Senate · 2026 Texas	James Talarico 48 · Ken Paxton 45	Democratic-aligned sponsor	1,670 LV
May 27–May 28, 2026	Governor · 2026 Texas	Greg Abbott 46 · Gina Hinojosa 41		1,670 LV
April 17–April 20, 2026	Governor · 2026 Texas	Greg Abbott 48 · Gina Hinojosa 43		1,018 LV
January 14–January 21, 2026	U.S. Senate · 2026 Texas Democratic	Jasmine Crockett 38 · James Talarico 37		1,290 LV
August 27–August 29, 2025	Governor · 2026 Texas	Rep 49 · Dem 43		843 RV
August 27–August 29, 2025	U.S. Senate · 2026 Texas Democratic	Beto O'Rourke 27 · Jasmine Crockett 26 · Colin Allred 13 · James Talarico 7 · Joaquin Castro 4		843 RV
August 4, 2024	Favorability · JD Vance	Unfavorable 46 · Favorable 35	BlueprintDemocratic-aligned sponsor	1,009 RV
July 21–July 22, 2024	Favorability · JD Vance	Unfavorable 39 · Favorable 32	BlueprintDemocratic-aligned sponsor	1,537 RV

§8What we looked for and didn't find

No founding year or ownership details were found.
Its client list gives no dates, so when client relationships began or ended is unknown.
No fieldwork or panel vendor was found for its recent polls, including those released by Texas Public Opinion Research.
The Texas Public Opinion Research release read does not name Slingshot as its pollster, so the link rests on Slingshot's own statement.
Searches found no AAPOR statement, court ruling or filing, regulator action, aggregator statement about excluding or reweighting its polls, or retraction by the firm.