Targoz Market Research

§1About

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

Targoz Market Research is a Nashville, Tennessee firm that says it does public opinion research, consumer intelligence and market strategy work for corporations, government agencies, industry associations and nonprofits.^2,3 Its about page names Randy Ellison as president and founder and says the firm was founded in 2007.³ It also sells PollSmart, a self-service statewide polling product.⁴ It says it conducted the January 2026 Beacon Poll for the Beacon Center of Tennessee and its TennSight platform, and a South Carolina Policy Council disclosure lists that group as the sponsor of a poll Targoz fielded from January 24 to February 1, 2026.^5,6

Kind

Commercial firm^2,3

Founded

2007^2,3

§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.

• Overton Insights/Targoz Market Research: Overton Insights · 4 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 Targoz website calls the firm independent and objective but does not say whether it works for candidates or parties; the clients it names in 2025 and 2026 posts are the James Madison Institute, the Beacon Center of Tennessee and the South Carolina Policy Council.^2,3,8

Of its 23 polls listed since the 2024 election, VoteHub flags 0 as paid for by a Democratic-aligned sponsor and 0 by a Republican-aligned sponsor⁹.

§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 once⁹. 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+3.1 (±2.4) across 7 polls of the generic ballot and 2026 races, in 4 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^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.

ABC News closed FiveThirtyEight in March 2025; its data stops at the 2022 elections. 2026 results will be added once states certify them.

§6Its polls

§7What we looked for and didn't find

• Our data show joint Overton Insights/Targoz Market Research bylines, but the Overton Insights pages read do not mention Targoz, so no relationship is recorded.
• The Beacon Center and South Carolina Policy Council polls are each documented once on the pages read, so neither is recorded as a standing client.
• Ownership was not stated on the pages read.
• No news-outlet partner was found.
• Searches found no AAPOR statement, court ruling or filing, regulator action, aggregator statement about excluding or reweighting its polls, or retraction by the firm.