Professional Research

Opposition research is a highly technical and complex field. As the internet and media bury us in megatons of information, professional researchers need to possess a well-rounded knowledge of a number of subjects and need to know how to separate what is important and what is not.

Professional researchers' expertise comes from:

1. Knowing where to find all of the available data,


2. Knowing how to select the most relevant information,


3. Confirming that information via other sources (nothing can be more damaging to a campaign than publishing incorrect or inaccurate information or misidentifying a target), and


4. Processing all the data into useable information.

Research Early, Research Often

The campaign's opposition researcher should be hired as early as possible. Hiring a researcher late in a campaign limits effectiveness and often leads to mad rushes to discover a document or prove a statement. We speak from experience. Our firm can always count upon last minute calling our offices from campaigns looking for their October surprise...when it's almost September.

Former Governor George Pataki - one of our best clients in the 90's - believed in the maxim that successful political operations do two things year round: fundraising and researching. A party organization should work to develop information on likely opposition, legislative issues, weak points in the opposition's caucus, dossiers on major opposition donors and so on. There are so many areas that need to be investigated and conducting continual research allows such dossiers to be built in a systematic way. Rather than scrambling through the 4 months of a traditional campaign research season, conducting a research operation throughout the year allows for comprehensive information to be found, leads followed up, and research threads interwoven - without breaking the bank.

The bottom line - the earlier the research is produced, the more use the campaign can make of it. If a campaign develops its message or does its polling before hiring a researcher, the campaign is not developing the most effective message and will not be polling on the most useful information during key points in the campaign.

Opposition research, when properly started early, becomes the structural foundation upon which the campaign is built. Polling, message development, direct mail, radio and television advertising and fundraising are all dependent on properly conducted and documented opposition research.

Gallagher Hollenbeck Research: More Accurate, Developed Faster, and Hits Harder than the Competition

Between our staff members, our firm has 30 years of experience in opposition research. We have successfully brought the old and the new together - while our firm relies on traditional approaches to research, we have also designed and built software to bring the art of opposition research into the 21st century. You can read about our technology online: the GILES Legislative Investigation System & our "hit-maker," the Oppo-Scan software.

The Best Tools, Thirty Years of Experience, the Drive to Deliver the Top of the Line Research - We have the best tools around and we have decades of experience in campaign research. But our firm also has the drive and dedication to deliver to our clients the best opposition and campaign research available. We have seen work of other firms - one the one hand you have researchers who get all the info and provide it to the campaign: piles of news clips without any context, massive lists of legislation, piles of meeting minutes and budgets, gaping holes in the research, all sorts of problems. On the other hand some firms produce a few uncited points on the big hits everyone knows about, but fail to include any of the supporting material or backup or show any imagination or interconnectivity in their work.

Gallagher Hollenbeck Produces Relevant, Accurate, and Consise Research - Gall Holl information is never incomplete and is never unusable. Every report is hand crafted and held to the absolute highest standard:

• We present a highly lauded "Greatest Hits" section of every report which boils down our findings to easily presentable, fully cited bulleted points.
• We include full media prints as an appendix, with the hardest hitting pull-quotes highlighted in our report.
• Our researchers understand that nothing occurs in a vacuum and specifically dedicate time to uncover connected themes & schemes. We specifically hunt for story lines that can be applied to other targets and for any maneuvers that appear to present a conflict of interest.
• We integrate our reports so the Table of Contents doubles as a greatest hits section and links to other parts of the document. This format is especially useful when presenting legislative histories.
• Our research allows us to provide results to the client in various different formats - from twitter ready one-liners to RSS ready postings to full research books in print or as web pages.

Your campaign will be spending a great deal of time and money crafting a message. Do not make an unnecessary mistake by overlooking the importance of getting high quality research. Contact our operatives today at 202.449.8621.

But why can’t I have some volunteers do my political research?

On many campaigns, professional political operatives and fundraisers seem like obvious choices when building a staff. Unfortunately, candidates and managers overlook the opportunity to bring in a professional researcher and instead opt to use volunteer staff or community members to conduct Google searches in the place of professional research.

Using non-professionals to conduct research will have dangerous results. Volunteers are passionate, which is a great trait in a campaign supporter. However, researchers must be detached and dispassionate enough to know not everything bad about the opponent is useful, and not everything bad about their own candidate is a lie. Novices can romanticize the research, search for the big knockout blow and miss many of the details. Volunteers have no accountability to the campaign to produce or to withhold proprietary information.

Volunteers have probably never done professional research before and are, at best, guessing. Their access to information will be limited by lack of knowledge of which questions to ask and where to find the answers. They will expect you to use everything they find, and you may lose volunteers if/when you don’t use their findings.

Let's face it - it's rare to find someone who has read the (thick!) book on advanced Google search techniques, let alone have access to, accounts with or expertise in databases such as Lexis Nexis, Westlaw, AutotrackXP, PACER, SearchSystems, Guidstar, HighBeam and so on.

Those who do find information are even more dangerous to a well-run campaign for a number of reasons: no one knows who they may talk to, nor do they understand the ethical codes governing research and political work.

All sources can appear of equal value to volunteers. They may have no discernment between an actual vote and a website that talks about a policy statement, or an ex-girlfriend’s opinion.

Any data obtained by volunteers will be raw. It will not necessarily tell how it affects the community or whether people support the issue. The novice will not be able to cross-check it against statements the candidate made five years ago in the newspaper.

There will be little organization or useful summarization of volunteer generated information, and the research you receive maybe in the form of reams and reams of paper, leaving you to do the real work of deciding what is important.

Worst of all, a volunteer's conclusions or sources could be wrong. It only takes one factual error to destroy a candidate’s credibility. The next time you see a 19-year-old political science student, ask yourself if you are willing to put your candidate's credibility completely in their hands.

In the same way that you should not ask your bus driver to install a hot water tank, or your bowling partner to teach you tennis, you should not ask a volunteer to do research. You will expend extra effort and will not get the research you need.