After 15 years of learning his craft working for some of the biggest names in the political consulting business – Peter Hart, Geoff Garin, Fred Yang, Rich Schlackman, Stan Greenberg – André Pineda opened his own firm with the goal of offering high-quality, cost-effective and research-based communications advice to carefully chosen progressive clients.

Pineda’s move has been good for his clients. In the 2006 cycle, 8 of his clients won against only 2 losses. (Here is a 2008 update.) His incumbent clients were undefeated while his challengers went 2 and 1. One of his independent expenditure clients took out an incumbent Republican congressman. Meanwhile, the work he has done for his advocacy clients has opened the door with legislators and other policymakers while earning countless interviews with both the print and electronic media, including the New York Times, Newsweek and NBC News.

The attributes that make Pineda Consulting distinctive include:

• All work done in-house. From developing the questionnaire to running the data to writing the reports, Pineda does the work. Only the phone calls are outsourced. Having worked for all the big firms, Pineda knows first-hand how much of the work is done by junior staffers instead of the principals. In contrast, every deliverable Pineda’s clients receive is executed from start to finish by Pineda, quickly and with painstaking attention to detail.
• Cost-effective. Pineda’s DC experience combined with his lack of overhead allows him to provide big-firm research without charging big-firm prices.
• Multilingual research. Pineda is committed to doing cost-effective language of choice surveys so that the point of view of immigrant populations is faithfully recorded. Experience has taught him that Spanish-dominant and Chinese-dominant speakers have different political preferences than their English-dominant progeny.
• International scope. Pineda Consulting has conducted focus groups in France, Germany and the Netherlands in order to help his technology clients gain competitive advantage. At Greenberg Research, Pineda worked on behalf of political and corporate clients from the Americas, Europe and Asia. Pineda also won competitive selection by the European Union to a program designed to give “young leaders” from around the world a first-hand appreciation of the EU’s goals, policies and peoples.
• Gets the numbers right. At least twice in 2006, the results of Pineda’s campaign polls have generated surprise if not outright skepticism. In one, Pineda’s client - a challenger - was down 32-49 to a long-time, well-financed incumbent. The poll, however, placed a spotlight on the path to victory. Less than 3 weeks later, the campaign was surprised to learn that the challenger had tied the incumbent at 39. Two weeks after that, Pineda’s client walked away with a 214 vote margin. In another example, a poll conducted on behalf of a statewide independent initiative by Pineda Consulting showed a legislative candidate down by 7 points. The candidate’s own polling had her campaign feeling confident; a poll by another independent expenditure conducted at the same time as the Pineda Consulting survey showed the same candidate up 7. Less than 2 weeks later, the candidate lost. From strict adherence to methodological best practices to accurate turnout modeling, Pineda gets the numbers right.

With his free time, André loves nothing more than to travel the globe with his wife, Araceli Ruano. When his clients’ polls are in the field, he rides his bike and reads. Recent books have included: The Ascent of Money, The Island at the Center of the World and The Road.