Polling is a mess. Most of us have spent the last decade watching "guaranteed" leads evaporate on election night. We've seen the "red waves" that didn't happen and the "blue walls" that crumbled like dry cake. So, when a firm like J.L. Partners shows up with numbers that look like outliers, the first word anyone screams is bias.
It’s an easy label. If a pollster finds Donald Trump winning the popular vote in 2024—when almost every other firm says he’s down by three—it’s natural to assume they’ve got a thumb on the scale. But was it actually J.L. Partners polling bias, or were they just looking at a reality everyone else was too scared to touch?
The truth is way more technical than a simple political lean.
The Outlier That Actually Hit the Mark
Back in late 2024, the polling industry was sweating. Most firms were adjusting their models to avoid the disasters of 2016 and 2020. They were "herding"—basically nudging their results to look like everyone else's because being wrong alone is a death sentence for a business.
J.L. Partners didn't herd.
They released a final model that didn't just predict a Trump victory; it predicted he would win the Electoral College by a significant margin and potentially take the popular vote. At the time, social media pundits called it "Republican hopium." They pointed to the founders' histories—James Johnson and Tom Lubbock both worked for the UK Conservative Party—as proof of a built-in lean.
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Then the actual votes were counted.
It turns out, J.L. Partners was one of the few firms that actually got it right. While heavyweights like Nate Silver were talking about a 50/50 toss-up, and some high-profile state polls showed Kamala Harris up in places like Iowa, J.L. Partners stood by their data.
Why People Think There Is a J.L. Partners Polling Bias
Why the "bias" tag? Usually, it's because their numbers often favor right-leaning outcomes more than the "Gold Standard" polls from places like the New York Times/Siena.
But there’s a nuance here. If a pollster uses a methodology that captures "disengaged" voters—people who don't usually answer their phones and hate the "establishment"—their results will naturally skew toward populist candidates. In the current era, those candidates happen to be on the right.
The Methodology Secret Sauce
J.L. Partners uses what they call a mixed-method approach. While old-school pollsters still rely heavily on live-caller phone surveys (which mostly reach grandmas and people with nothing to do), J.L. Partners goes where the "invisible" voters are.
- In-app gaming polls: They literally reach people while they’re playing games on their phones.
- SMS/Text-to-web: Faster and more anonymous than a voice call.
- No opt-in panels: They avoid those "professional survey takers" who sign up for five bucks and tell you what they think you want to hear.
This approach tends to find the "shy Trump voter" or the "Reform UK supporter" that traditional methods miss. When you find more of those people, your poll looks "biased" to a casual observer, but it might just be more representative of the actual electorate.
Accuracy vs. Partisanship
We have to distinguish between a "partisan pollster" and a pollster that "understands partisan shifts."
James Johnson, the face of the firm, has been very open about their goal: to stop missing the working-class voter. In the 2024 UK General Election, their SRP (Spatially Robust Post-stratification) model was remarkably close to the final results, correctly identifying the massive collapse of the Conservative vote and the surge of Reform UK in specific regions.
The firm’s POLARIS model in 2025 further cemented this. It showed Labour losing its majority and Reform UK gaining massive ground—projections that, at the time, seemed radical but were backed by 306,817 data points from local by-elections.
The "House Effect" Explained
Every polling firm has a "house effect." This isn't a conspiracy; it's a byproduct of how they weight their data. If you weight for education more than for past voting behavior, you get a different result.
J.L. Partners tends to have a house effect that is roughly +1 to +2 points toward the right compared to the industry average. Is that bias? Or is the rest of the industry biased toward the left because they can't reach the "truck driver in Pennsylvania"?
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Honestly, it depends on who wins.
In the 2024 New York 3rd District special election, J.L. Partners showed a very tight race (Suozzi 45%, Pilip 46%), but Suozzi (the Democrat) ended up winning by nearly 8 points. In that specific case, their "bias" or methodology overshot the Republican support. It happens. No model is a crystal ball.
How to Read These Polls Without Getting Fooled
Don't just look at the headline number. If you see a J.L. Partners poll, you've got to look at the "how" and the "who."
- Check the "Likely Voter" screen. J.L. Partners is aggressive about filtering out people who probably won't show up. This usually helps Republicans.
- Look at the "Uncertains." They often push undecided voters to pick a side based on their leanings, which reduces the "I don't know" fluff that plagues other polls.
- Compare the trend, not the snapshot. Is the margin moving? That's usually more important than whether the Republican is up by 2 or down by 1.
The reality of J.L. Partners polling bias is that they are willing to be "wrong" in the eyes of the mainstream media if their data tells them something different. In 2024, that courage paid off. In other cycles, like the 2022 midterms where the "Red Wave" was more of a "Red Puddle," their methodology faced more scrutiny.
Actionable Insights for the Next Election Cycle
Stop treating polls like a scoreboard. They are a weather report, and the wind can shift.
If you want to use J.L. Partners’ data effectively, follow these steps:
- Diversify your diet. Always look at J.L. Partners alongside a firm like AtlasIntel (which also uses non-traditional digital methods) and a traditional firm like Siena College. If all three agree, the data is solid. If J.L. Partners is the outlier, they've likely found a pocket of disengaged voters the others missed—or they've over-modeled the "angry" demographic.
- Watch the "Non-Response" Bias. The biggest threat to polling right now is that certain types of people simply refuse to talk to pollsters. J.L. Partners’ use of gaming apps is a direct attempt to fix this. Pay attention to their "methodology" section in the PDF releases; they are more transparent than most.
- Ignore the "Bias" Labels. In 2026 and beyond, the most "biased" looking polls are often the ones that end up being the most accurate because they aren't trying to fit in. Look for firms that show results that make you uncomfortable. That's where the truth usually hides.
Polling is evolving. J.L. Partners is at the forefront of that shift, moving away from the "phone call at dinner time" model and toward a data-heavy, multi-channel approach. Whether you call it bias or better science, their track record in 2024 suggests they’ve found a way to hear the people everyone else is ignoring.