SSRS

§1About

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

CNN's poll releases describe SSRS as an independent research company and say CNN polls are fielded on the SSRS Opinion Panel, a probability-based panel of U.S. adults, by web and telephone.² An October 2025 SSRS release calls it a full-service market and survey research firm that does political and election polling, names Melissa Herrmann as president, and announces its acquisition of Edison Research.³

Kind

Commercial firm³

§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.

• CNN/SSRS: CNN · 61 polls listed

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.

Doesn’t say whom it works for. The CNN and SSRS documents read call SSRS independent but do not say whether it works for candidates or parties.^2,3

Of its 51 polls listed since the 2024 election, VoteHub flags 0 as paid for by a Democratic-aligned sponsor and 0 by a Republican-aligned sponsor⁴.

§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 once⁴. 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+0.9 (±1.3) across 18 polls of the generic ballot and 2026 races, in 13 contests.

Net approval: Donald Trump

−9.2 points (±1.4) across 17 polls, against other polls of the same question.

Net approval: JD Vance

−8.5 points (±4.9) across 6 polls, against other polls of the same question.

Net favorability: JD Vance

−6.2 points (±1.3) 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^5,6: 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.

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+7.6

Relative to other polls of the same races

D+1.7

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

• The SSRS website returned HTTP 307 redirects with no destination and CNN's DocumentCloud files returned HTTP 403, so SSRS's own about, history and leadership pages were not read.
• No founding year or headquarters was confirmed from a page that loaded.
• A search result from its history page names AUS Marketing Research Systems as its parent company, but the page could not be read, so no ownership is listed (see pointers).
• Its other standing clients and the outside data contributors to its panels were not checked from SSRS pages.
• Searches found no AAPOR statement, court ruling or filing, regulator action, aggregator statement about excluding or reweighting its polls, or retraction by the firm.