Morning Consult is a global, privately held data intelligence company established in 2014. It was named one of the fastest growing technology companies in North America by Deloitte in both 2018 and 2019. The company specializes in online survey research technology and has offices in Washington, D.C., New York City, Chicago, and San Francisco. Morning Consult provides global survey research tools, data services and news to organizations in business, marketing, economics and politics. The company's proprietary brand tracking platform, Brand Intelligence, tracks over 3,000 companies, products, and individuals across 15 countries by surveying tens of thousands of people every day on each brand it tracks.
History
Morning Consult was founded in 2013 by CEO Michael Ramlet, CRO Kyle Dropp and CTO Alex Dulin. It started with a poll looking at whether young and uninsured Americans were going to sign up for the Affordable Care Act's insurance exchanges, published just before the exchanges went live in 2013. The White House used that polling in its briefing later that day. Initially operating from a row house near Capitol Hill, the firm went from 13 employees in 2014 to 160 in mid-2020. In 2015, the company published a report on the ‘Shy Trump’ voter in the Republican presidential primaries. The claim has since been challenged. In February 2016, Morning Consult partnered with Vox to conduct polling on topical stories in politics and culture. In June 2016, Morning Consult debuted the Morning Consult Brand Index in Fortune magazine's annual release of the Fortune 500 list and began polling with Bloomberg News on investor sentiment. During the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Morning Consult and the political journalism company Politico published a weekly polling partnership on ‘political issues, personalities and media aspects that affect the daily debate.' The polling relationship continued after the 2016 election and is released weekly in Politico Playbook. The company's services saw an increase in popularity in 2016 and 2017 following its accurate polling results for the 2016 U.S. presidential election, showing a closer race than other pollsters. In 2017, Morning Consult launched its survey research technology product, Brand Intelligence. The survey research technology platform uses daily interviews with thousands of Americans to provide daily tracking on nearly 3,000 companies, products and services. Morning Consult conducts regular survey research with The New York Times. In October 2017, the company opened an office in New York City and then in Chicago and San Francisco in 2018. In 2018, the company announced it was partnering with The Hollywood Reporter for a weekly polling series on what Americans think about the hottest news and trends in Hollywood. In May 2020, Morning Consult completed a $31 million Series A funding round. The funding includes capital from James Murdoch’s Lupa Systems, Advance Venture Partners and others. The funding values the company at $306 million.
Polling and methodology
Morning Consult conducts scientific online polling. It uses a stratified sampling process and multiple nationally recognized vendors to gain access to tens of millions of Americans. After fielding, Morning Consult applies weights based on age, race/ethnicity, gender, educational attainment, and region. During the 2016 presidential election, Morning Consult had one of the most accurate national polls: despite calling the winner of the election incorrectly, it successfully predicted Hillary Clinton winning the national popular vote by 3 percent. The website FiveThirtyEight also found that Morning Consult, along with other prolific online polling firms, did not have a strong house effect in its 2016 election polling.
Brand Intelligence
In the spring of 2017, Morning Consult launched Brand Intelligence, a survey research and media monitoring platform. The platform tracks over 2,000 public-facing brands and products across 12 countries, and offers subscribers access to data on their companies as well as competitors. For each brand that is tracked, Morning Consult conducts 200 interviews per day. Brand Intelligence also provides social media listening and media monitoring services, aggregating results from over 85,000 news outlets. In October 2017, data from Brand Intelligence was cited in the New York Times showing changes in survey results on the NFL's brand after President Donald Trump criticized the league on Twitter.
Morning Consult's editorial division covers eight subject areas: Washington, Brands, Tech, Energy, Finance, Health, Sports, and Entertainment. The editorial team produces original reporting, as well as daily email newsletter briefings that reach 300,000 subscribers. The editorial team also produces semi-annual rankings on a range of topics, including governor rankings, U.S. senator rankings, a most loved brand index, and more. Its unique topics have gone viral, including asking voters to locate Iran on a map in January 2020 and if food has a gender.
