The global giant behind the polls that occasionally miss the mark

Health · Published 19 October 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: With 20,000 employees across 87 countries, Ipsos is a titan of market research. Yet, despite its massive scale and sophisticated sampling methods, even the world's largest agencies can struggle to predict the unpredictable outcomes of modern elections.

Founded in 1975 by Didier Truchot, Ipsos began with a focus on measuring the effectiveness of advertising campaigns in France. Early innovations included the 1977 Baromètre d'Affichage, which analyzed billboard success, and the 1979 France des Cadras Actifs, which tracked the reading habits of executives. The firm's expansion from a French specialist to a global powerhouse was driven largely by strategic acquisitions, such as the 2011 purchase of Synovate, which helped establish it as the world's third-largest research agency.

The company's reach is vast, generating €2,525 million in revenue in 2025. Its operations are geographically diverse: 49% of its revenue comes from the EMEA region, 35% from the Americas, and 16% from Asia-Pacific. In the United States, the firm utilizes KnowledgePanel, a probability-based online panel of approximately 60,000 members, using US Postal Service data to recruit respondents through a rigorous, address-based sampling process.

However, the prestige of polling is not immune to scrutiny or error. In Australia, the Nine Entertainment group severed its relationship with Ipsos in 202 or 2022 after the 2019 federal election, where the Liberal–National Coalition won despite contrary predictions from all major polls. Similarly, a FiveThirtyEight analysis of the 2021–2022 US election cycle found that in the final 21 days before elections for Governor, Senate, and House, Ipsos polls correctly predicted winners only 17% of the time.

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