Honest answers to the questions we hear most often.
AmericanElectionHQ is an independent, nonpartisan platform that tracks elections at every level — from US Senate races to county commissioner contests — and lets anyone weigh in on who they support. Our goal is to fill the polling gap for the thousands of races that receive little or no coverage from traditional polling organizations.
AmericanElectionHQ is an independent project built and operated by a small team. We are not affiliated with any political party, campaign, government agency, or media organization. We are building in public and are transparent about what we are and what we are not.
No. AmericanElectionHQ has no affiliation with any political party, candidate, campaign committee, PAC, or advocacy group. Coverage decisions are made internally based on the significance and competitiveness of a race — not on who contacts us or what they offer. We do not accept payment to add races, adjust results, or feature candidates.
AmericanElectionHQ is currently self-funded. We do not accept advertising from political candidates or campaigns. If our funding model changes in the future, we will disclose it on this page and in our Privacy Policy.
Use the Contact page at americanelectionhq.com/contact. For suspected poll manipulation or data integrity issues, email integrity@americanelectionhq.com directly. For editorial concerns or factual corrections, email editorial@americanelectionhq.com. We investigate every credible report.
Our team creates polls for each race we cover. Candidate polls use a standardized question — 'Who do you support in this race?' — applied consistently across all races. Opinion polls on policy topics are written by our team with the goal of neutrality: no leading language, balanced response options, and internal review before publishing. We do not accept externally submitted poll questions.
No. Our polls are opt-in public sentiment polls, not scientific probability polls. A scientific poll randomly selects a representative sample of people from a defined population and weights the results for demographic accuracy. Our polls are open to anyone who visits the platform — participants are self-selected, results are not weighted, and the sample is not representative of any specific electorate. Think of our results the way you would think of an online reader poll: a real signal of engaged public sentiment, not a prediction of election outcomes.
Results are shown as raw vote counts and percentages among all participants who passed our validation checks (security verification, rate limiting, session deduplication). No demographic weighting, smoothing, or statistical correction is applied. The total number of responses is always displayed so you can assess the volume behind the percentages.
Results are available to participants who complete the poll. This is intentional — it encourages real engagement rather than passive browsing, and it helps ensure the results reflect people who have a genuine opinion on the race. If you have already voted in a poll from the same browser, the results will be visible without voting again.
Results update in near-real-time. When you complete a poll and reach the results screen, the data is fetched live from our servers. Cached results on race pages refresh every 30 seconds. There may be a brief delay between a submission and its appearance in the displayed totals.
Responses that exhibit patterns associated with manipulation — high submission velocity from a single IP, incomplete poll flow, unusual geographic clustering — are automatically flagged for manual review. Our team reviews flagged responses and removes those determined to be inauthentic from displayed results. We also enforce automated security verification and per-IP rate limiting at the point of submission. Coordinated inauthentic behavior is a violation of our Terms of Service and may be reported to relevant authorities in serious cases.
We collect your name, email address, and ZIP code to associate responses with real people — which makes it meaningfully harder to submit large volumes of fabricated responses. If you opt in to supporter actions (volunteering, donating, or receiving updates), your contact information is also used to connect you with the relevant campaign. Providing your information is required to complete the poll, but the supporter action step is always optional.
Aggregate poll results are displayed publicly on the platform. Your individual response — including your name, email, vote choice, and any enrichment data you provide — is stored in our database and is accessible to our internal team for moderation and data quality purposes. We do not publish individual responses. If you opted in to supporter actions, your contact information is shared with the relevant campaign or organization.
Yes. Email privacy@americanelectionhq.com with your name and the email address you used when participating. We will locate your records and delete them within a reasonable timeframe. Note that deleting your individual response does not retroactively change the aggregate results already displayed.
No. Your vote is linked to the contact information you provide (name, email, ZIP) and to a session identifier stored in your browser. This is by design — it allows us to enforce one-response-per-session deduplication and to investigate suspicious activity. If you want your individual record removed from our database, you can request deletion at privacy@americanelectionhq.com.
No. We do not sell your personal information to third parties. If you opted in to a supporter action (volunteer, donate, receive updates), your contact information is shared with the candidate or campaign you expressed support for — but only when you explicitly choose that option. We do not share data with data brokers, advertising networks, or political organizations beyond that explicit opt-in.
All poll submissions pass through automated security verification that distinguishes human visitors from automated scripts. In most cases this happens silently in the background and you will not notice it. If additional verification is needed, it may prompt a brief interactive challenge. This protects the integrity of our data by blocking bots and automated submission tools.
No — at least not easily. We enforce one response per session per poll using a session identifier stored in your browser's local storage. If you attempt to vote again in the same poll from the same browser, the platform returns your original response rather than creating a new one. Users who clear their browser data, switch to a private window, or use a different device can technically submit again. We address this through complementary controls — security checks, rate limiting, and behavioral flagging — but we are transparent that session-based deduplication is not foolproof.
The likelihood-to-vote question (on a 1–5 scale) gives us an additional data point beyond raw candidate preference. It allows us to surface the enthusiasm gap between supporters of different candidates, and it provides context that helps readers interpret results more accurately. We store this data but do not currently display it on the public results screen.
AmericanElectionHQ works on all modern browsers including Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge. We recommend using an up-to-date browser version for the best experience. The poll flow uses standard web technologies and does not require any plugins or extensions. If you encounter a technical issue, please report it at hello@americanelectionhq.com.
Don’t see your question here? Contact us and we’ll get back to you.