University of New Hampshire Survey Center

§1About

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

The UNH Survey Center is a survey research unit of the University of New Hampshire College of Liberal Arts in Durham, New Hampshire, and its January 2026 report names Dr. Andrew E. Smith as director.^3,4 The same report says its Granite State Poll surveys members of the Granite State Panel, an online panel the Center recruits by phone, text message and mail.³ Its 2026 poll releases also cover Maine, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island.⁵

Kind

Academic³

Founded

1976⁴

§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.

§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. Its January 2026 report describes the Center as an independent, nonpartisan academic survey organization that works for university researchers, government agencies, nonprofits, businesses and media clients.³

Of its 77 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

D+2.6 (±3.8) across 9 polls of the generic ballot and 2026 races, in 5 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^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

D+1.1

Relative to other polls of the same races

D+1.4

Typical size of miss

7.4 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 outside fieldwork firm found; the Center describes collecting Granite State Poll data through its own panel.
• Poll release PDFs on scholars.unh.edu returned a bot check, so the methodology of individual 2026 releases, including any sponsor named on them, was not read.
• CNN pages refused our request (HTTP 451), so the CNN description of the CNN/UNH poll was not read; the CNN relationship rests on the About page of the Center and a student newspaper report.
• No start or end dates found for any media partnership.
• No campaign or party clients found.
• Findings search: web searches combining the Center name with AAPOR, FiveThirtyEight, Silver Bulletin, exclusion and retraction terms found nothing that fits the finding rules (a 2026 campaign criticism of a Vermont poll was found, which is not a finding); 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 Center; PACER and state court dockets were not searched.