No major media outlet made a new top 10 list of “Most Valuable Pollsters” in 2024, a glaring finding likely to reinforce doubts about media polls in future elections.
Instead of dominating the top of the list unveiled by ActiVote, media polls were sprinkled throughout the 136 pollsters that were graded. One used by the Des Moines Register, the once-prominent Selzer & Co. presidential poll, ranked dead last.
The top 10 are all professional polls that produced the most and most accurate election results in 2024.
The top five included some that were regularly accused of being pro-Trump or right-leaning, though all they did was include the correct percentage of Republican voters, such as Rasmussen Reports. In the top 10, at 9th, were pollsters that did work for President Donald Trump’s campaign, Fabrizio/McLaughlin.
To come up with its ranking, pollster ActiVote — which ranked eighth on the list — sized up performance and the number of surveys conducted. It also looked at the results of polling of battleground states and the overall presidential and congressional election.
(1/) Today, ActiVote released the 2024 Most Valuable Pollster (MVP) Rankings, a ranking of 136 pollsters who collectively published 1349 general election polls in the last 30 days of the 2024 presidential election cycle.
For the detailed report including full methodology… pic.twitter.com/jkiwC8dxJu
— ActiVote (@ActiVoteUS) March 26, 2025
“AtlasIntel is without a doubt the Most Valuable Pollster for 2024. They produced the largest number of polls (124) in 5 categories, with excellent results in four of those categories,” per the new report.
“The comparison with other pollsters who produce 60+ polls is striking: Siena/NYT with 72 polls in 18th place, Morning Consult with 90 polls in 29th place, and YouGov with 84 polls in 37th place, showing that producing many polls and doing so accurately is a rare feat,” added the report.
Performing well in three key newsmaker categories, swing state polls, presidential popular vote and Senate polls, pushed several big names into the top 10.
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“Several top-10 pollsters focused (almost) entirely on these three categories and did so accurately: InsiderAdvantage (27 of their overall 28 polls) in 2nd place, OnMessage (16 of their overall 17 polls) in 3rd place, Rasmussen (34 of their 39 polls) in 4th place, Trafalgar Group (28 of their overall 30 polls) in 5th place, Patriot Polling (all 17 polls) in 6th place, and Fabrizio/McLaughlin (all 7 polls) in 9th place,” said the report.
The media giants fell behind. For example, Siena/NYT ranked 18th, the Washington Post was 21st, and CNN was 50th out of 136.
The top 10
1 – AtlasIntel
2 – InsiderAdvantage
3 – OnMessage Inc.
4 – Rasmussen Reports
5 – Trafalgar Group
6 – Patriot Polling
7 – Emerson
8 – ActiVote
9 – Fabrizio/McLaughlin
10 – TIPP