Navigator Research is a left-of-center polling and public opinion research organization. The group is a project of the Sixteen Thirty Fund, a funding and fiscal sponsorship organization managed by the Washington, D.C.-based consultancy Arabella Advisors.

Democratic-aligned pollsters Jeffrey Pollock and Nick Gourevitch of Global Strategy Group and Margie Omero of GBA Strategies lead the project. ¹ The polling outfit releases public opinion polling related to President Donald Trump and tests messages to attack him and other Republicans. The organization is backed by a selection of left-of-center activists and organizations that advise it.

Overview

Navigator Research was founded in 2018 in response to the election of President Donald Trump in 2016. The founders of Navigator Research saw a vacuum in the messaging space as related to how fast-paced the news cycle is in the Trump era. The group sought to release monthly reports on research and messaging in order to help the left make gains. ²

The group’s first message testing released focused on the economy. The poll found that while the respondents believed the economy was good, they also believed that it was benefiting the wealthy more than average Americans. The poll also tested lines of attack against President Trump that included questions about his temperament, abusing his power for personal gain, spending too much on the golf course, and being generally lazy. ³

During the 2018 midterms, the organization released polling focusing on the Special Counsel investigation into allegations of Trump campaign involvement in Russian government efforts to interfere in the 2016 Presidential election. It produced polling trying to show Democrats what messages to use against Trump. ⁴ The organization also released polling data about the National Rifle Association attempting to portray it as unpopular with voters. ⁵

During the week of March 20, 2020, Navigator Research disregarded their monthly poll system in place of daily updates meant to track attitudes and feelings about the Covid-19 pandemic and the Trump administration’s handling of it. According to their daily tracker, U.S. citizens appear more worried about personal health and the wellbeing of loved ones than economic woes, but the group claims that President Trump’s response to Covid-19 has been “unprepared and chaotic.” ⁶ Ian Sams, a Democratic strategist and consultant for Navigator Research, commented, “We can’t handle this appropriately in real time as a progressive movement, as Democratic leaders, if we don’t understand how the public is processing it.” ⁷

Organization

Navigator Research is a joint venture between Democratic polling firms Global Strategy Group and GBA Strategies. It is a fiscally sponsored project of the Sixteen Thirty Fund, which hosts the organization and handles all of its tax-exempt paperwork.

The organization also provides operating grants for its host organizations. The Sixteen Thirty Fund has been described as a “key group founded to resist Trump” by The Atlantic. ⁸

It is unclear how much money has been provided to Navigator Research through Sixteen Thirty Fund; the design of the Sixteen Thirty Fund hides the scale of its individual projects since all expenditures are reported on the parent organization’s tax returns. ⁹

Pollsters

The organization is a joint venture between Global Strategy Group and GBA Strategies. It borrows heavily from both organizations and another left-wing coalition-building group, the Hub Project, also a project of the Sixteen Thirty Fund.

Jefrey Pollock is the founding partner and president of GSG. Margie Omero is a principal at GBA Strategies. Nick Gourevitch leads the research at GSG. ¹⁰

Bryan Bennett is the associate director of polling and analytics at the Hub Project. Bennett is a former associate at the Democratic polling organization Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research. J. Isaiah Bailey is the polling and analytics manager at the Hub Project. ¹¹

Advisors

The group has an advisory board of various left-wing activists. Among those who are on the advisory board are Christina Reynolds, who serves as the vice president of EMILY’s List; Delvone Michael, a senior political strategist for the national Working Families Party; Felicia Ward, the president and CEO of Roosevelt Forward; and Symone D. Sanders, a CNN contributor and political consultant who worked on U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders’s 2016 presidential campaign. ¹²

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