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John and Jim McLaughlin served as pollsters for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, and the things they do for Newsmax pretty closely reflect that (even if that connection to the Trump campaign is rarely disclosed). In August 2023, after the first Republican presidential debate — which Trump avoided in favor of an interview with Tucker Carlson — the McLaughlins had a raft of pro-Trump polling to peddle:

After the second Republican debate, the McLaughlins served up more pro-Trump propaganda in an Oct. 2 column:

Donald Trump is crushing the Republican primary field and he’s beating his political persecutor, Joe Biden.
Our recent national poll was completed right before the second Republican debate.
This national poll of 1,000 likely voters (+/-3.1% at the 95% confidence interval), was completed between Sept. 22 and 26.
[…]
In the general election among all voters, in spite of four indictments in five months, President Trump beats Joe Biden 47% to 43% with 10% undecided.
Trump wins among Republicans 87% to 10%; takes 12% of Democrats to Biden’s 79% and wins independents 41% to 39%.
Trump also exceeds his 2020 share of the minority vote receiving 13% among African Americans and 40% among Hispanics.

Of course, the fact that the McLaughlins are on Trump’s payroll means these results should be seen has biased and less than reliable. They ended with more pro-Trump rah-rah:

As national Republican leaders, and former presidential candidates Newt Gingrich and Scott Walker have said the primary is over. Trump has won.
It’s really time to end the RNC debates which are nothing more than anti-Trump infomercials that help Joe Biden.
It’s time to focus on beating Joe Biden and ending his reign of failure and corruption before Joe Biden puts his leading Republican opponent in jail — which will end the reason for the opposition Republican Party to exist.

The McLaughlins served up more slanted pro-Trump polling in an Octobe 2023 column:

Since our last national poll, Donald Trump has gone to Iowa, New Hampshire and to court. The most attention Joe Biden received was when he flew back and forth to Israel, where he may be talking tough, while appeasing Hamas and Iran.
The result – President Trump destroys the Republican primary field and widens his lead over Joe Biden.
This national poll of 1,000 likely voters (+/-3.1% at the 95% confidence interval), was completed between October 19th and 25th.

The McLaughlins took shots at Ron DeSantis:

In a two-way ballot between President Trump and Ron DeSantis, Trump leads 73% to DeSantis 27%. No undecided.
Most distressing for Ron DeSantis is the serious rise of his negative ratings. In January, among all voters, DeSantis had a favorable to unfavorable rating of 40% favorable to 39% unfavorable. Now DeSantis’ favorable rating among all voters has declined to 34% while his unfavorable rating rose to 51%. This is a big net decrease, -18%.
Among Republican primary voters his favorable rating is only 57%, with a significant share being negative, 29% unfavorable. This makes it very, very hard for Ron DeSantis to prove that he can beat Joe Biden, while Donald Trump is leading.

They also polled on another pro-trump question that they pushed in their previous column:

When Republican primary voters were asked about the following statement: “Currently Donald Trump is leading in all the Republican primary polls nationally by very big margins of 30, 40 or more points and winning early states like Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina by big margins. Even more important President Trump leads Joe Biden in the national media polls like ABC/Washington Post, CBS, Harvard
Harris and others. It’s time to stop the RNC debates attacking Donald Trump, fight Biden’s political indictments, and rally Republicans behind President Trump so we can start the campaign of beating Joe Biden.”
76% of Republican primary voters agreed and only 16% disagreed.

They concluded by echoing that talking point (and their previous column):

As national Republican leaders like Newt Gingrich and Scott Walker have said, the primary is over.
Trump has won the GOP field.
Gingrich and others have called for the RNC to cancel future GOP debates to unify behind Trump to prepare early for 2024. That would be a smart move.
It’s too early to say Trump has won the 2024 election, but his prospects are looking very strong.
Donald Trump as President and a Republican majority in Congress. We have a year to go.

The McLaughlins don’t seem to understand how they discredit themselves by sounding much more like Trump campaign operatives than impartial pollsters.

After Trump won, the McLaughlins’ rah-rah continued. In a February 2025 column, the McLaughlins hyped that “Despite the liberal media and famed Clinton strategist James Carville’s fondest wishes, after a month of historic transformational activity, public opinion is still on President Trump’s side, and he enjoys majority approval from the voters.” One of the brothers got an uncritical appearance on Newsmax TV on March 27:

Americans are saying in polls they think the country is headed in the right direction under President Donald Trump, and that’s because they see the successes he’s already had in office, pollster Jim McLaughlin told Newsmax on Thursday.
“Look what he’s done on the border,” said McLaughlin, who appeared on Newsmax’s “Wake Up America” with his brother and partner at McLaughlin and Associates, John McLaughlin. “He’s kept his promises. Look what he’s doing with the economy right now. We’re creating jobs.”
McLaughlin added that prices are coming down on gas and groceries.
“For the first time since Donald Trump became president, groceries didn’t go up last month,” he said. “The American people are seeing the successes of Donald Trump and then they’re doing the comparison between the failures of Joe Biden and the Democrats, and it’s a clear choice for the Republicans.”
Meanwhile, new polling from McLaughlin and Associates is finding that voters are more likely to choose a candidate who advocates for permanent tax relief, and John McLaughlin told Newsmax that “we won’t win the midterm elections” unless legislation is passed to codify the president’s tax cuts.

In 2026, here are some of the recent McLaughlin polls it has promoted:

the McLaughlins also promoted Republican New Jersey governor candidate Jack Ciattarelli and New York City mayor candidate Andrew Cuomo — both of whom lost — and pre-emptively blamed Curtis Sliwa for losing the NYC mayor’s race because he “failed to mobilize President Donald Trump’s base in New York City.”

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But for guys who regularly peddle bogus and biased polls, they oddly take offense at the supposedly biased polls of others. Eric Mack wrote in an April 28 article:

President Donald Trump has called out liberal media pollsters for pushing anti-Trump narratives aimed at tarnishing his legacy at the 100-day mark.
“Great Pollster John McLaughlin, one of the most highly respected in the industry, has just stated that The Failing New York Times Poll, and the ABC/Washington Post Poll, about a person named Donald J. Trump, me, are fake polls from fake news organizations,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post Monday morning.
“The New York Times has only 37% Trump 2024 voters, and the ABC/Washington Post Poll has only 34% Trump Voters, unheard of numbers unless looking for a negative result, which they are.”
The ABC News poll used “adults” in the U.S. for their sample and only weighted “registered voters” from that pool of adults.

One McLaughlin brother served his own attack on polls he doesn’t like in a Nov. 4 article:

National media polls are continuing to distort President Donald Trump’s support, John McLaughlin, a key pollster for the president’s 2024 campaign, told Newsmax on Monday.
“Absolutely not,” McLaughlin said when asked on Newsmax’s “Finnerty” if he trusts this year’s surveys.
“They’re doing the same thing; they’re trying to run down Donald Trump on purpose,” he added.
He said his firm’s latest poll showed Trump with a 51% approval rating and 46% disapproval but added a Washington Post-Ipsos survey was “a poll of adults polluted with nonvoters.”
“They weighted it down to 30%,” he said. “That’s 20 points less than we got in the election last November.”
He also criticized an NBC poll for using registered voters instead of likely voters.
It was not explained how likely voters are a more reliable pool than registered voters. He then went on to build up Sliwa one more time:
In New York City, McLaughlin said, Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa could act as a spoiler.
“If he has less than 50%, Curtis Sliwa has played spoiler because he’ll be the difference … vis-à-vis Ross Perot in 1992 with George H.W. Bush,” McLaughlin said.

In reality, Sliwa won just 7 percent of the vote — so much for that “spoiler” stuff. and the accuracy of McLaughlin’s polls.

Newsmax loves polls from John and Jim McLaughlin because they are fellow right-wingers whose polls reflect their bias. An example of this is a Feb. 24 article:

Veteran pollster Jim McLaughlin told Newsmax on Tuesday he predicts a rough road for Democrats come 2028, arguing that the party’s potential presidential bench is stacked with “failed radical left-wing politicians” who won’t resonate beyond their coastal base.
On “Ed Henry The Big Take,” McLaughlin said Democrats like to brand themselves as defenders of democracy — but he questioned how competitive their own nomination process has truly been.
“You look at who these Democratic candidates are. And look, they always tell us how they’re the party of democracy.
“But the truth is, they haven’t had a competitive Democratic primary — think about this — since about 2008, since when Barack Obama won and he upset Hillary Clinton back then,” McLaughlin said.
“They’ve basically been fixing things and clearing it” since then.
McLaughlin, who served on President Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign, was responding to CNN chief data analyst Harry Enten, who this week derided the Democrats’ early 2028 presidential field as a “clown car” with “no clear front-runner.”

The McLaughlins wrote a March 12 column sucking up to Trump for his attacks on Iran:

A newly completed national survey of likely voters shows strong support for President Donald Trump’s decision to use military force to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons.
Even more striking, when voters are reminded of Iran’s long record of hostility toward the United States, support grows significantly – with 57% backing military action.
A clear majority believes decisive action is justified — and an even stronger majority of 59% said President Trump should finish the job to ensure Iran never acquires nuclear weapons.
The findings also reveal a significant gap between the views of the American electorate and the tone of much of the left-of-center media coverage, which has largely portrayed the public as skeptical or opposed to military action.
Our data suggests otherwise.

The brothers then admitted how they slanted the poll:

In questions sponsored by the Tea Party Patriots Citizens Fund, voters were first reminded that Iran has been a rogue nation for 47 years, responsible for killing Americans and taking Americans hostage, including the deaths of U.S. soldiers in Jordan in 2024.

There’s little reason to include that in a poll question beyond trolling for a pro-Trump answer.

The McLaughlins pushed the pro-Trump narrative on Iran again in an April 17 column:

Our latest national survey makes one thing unmistakably clear: American voters continue to support President Trump’s decisive action to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons — and that support is strengthening, not fading.
Despite relentless opposition from left-leaning media, a solid majority of likely voters say military action is justified to protect American lives.
The message from voters is simple: finish the job.
Unlike many public polls that oversample non-voters and dilute Republican support, our survey focuses on likely midterm voters and explicitly frames the central issue — stopping Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
That difference matters, and it shows:

Well, when you slant poll questions to fit your agenda, you get the answers you want. The column concluded by reinforcing the narrative it wants out there:

After a month of sacrifice by American service members, voters are not wavering.
They understand the stakes.
They support the mission.
And they support the commander in chief.
The conclusion is unavoidable: despite media resistance, the American public stands firmly behind stopping a nuclear Iran — and expects the job to be finished.

Ask biased questions, get biased answers — that appears to be the McLaughlins’ modus operandi.

Ruddy shilled for Trump in a May 21 column:

For months now, much of the mainstream media has tried to sell Americans on the idea that President Donald Trump is politically weakened, economically vulnerable and somehow disconnected from the public mood.
Yet once again, the elites are making the same mistake they’ve made for nearly a decade: underestimating both Trump and the American people.
Mark Twain famously said, “Statistics don’t lie. People do.”
The modern version may be even more relevant: “The polls don’t lie — pollsters do.”

No word on whether Ruddy feels that way about the McLaughlins.

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