False Flags & Fear Mongering: The Strategy Group's Manufactured Monopoly
The Elephant in the Room returns to expose one of The Strategy Group's lucrative rackets.
Columbus-based freelancer Elephant in the Room returns today to shed light on The Strategy Group, a once-mighty “Christian” Republican hobgoblin consulting firm that’s falling on increasingly hard times.
The Rooster first covered Strategy Group’s vindictive queen of a founder, Rex Elsass, in Feb. 2023.
Strategy Group President Little Ben Yoho is another villain in the Rooster Cinematic Universe, best known for defrauding legendary Republican megadonor Virginia Ragan of $13,000 to take his then-girlfriend to a Dave Matthews Band concert in Pittsburgh.
The Strategy Group is under federal investigation for its role in what appears to be a $200 embezzlement from the United States Treasury while working for the since-disgraced former Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem.
Worse for The Strategy Group, it appears to be losing electoral juice.
Earlier this month, its contracted candidate lost Iowa’s Republican gubernatorial primary despite a $4.1 million money advantage and the endorsement of President Business Deals.
Last night, The Strategy Group’s client, who lacked Business Deals’ Complete & Total Endorsement, ate shit in South Carolina’s Republican gubernatorial runoff.
Oh well. Not my problem!
As always, today’s freelancer has already been compensated a fair market value for their labor.
The Rooster can promptly pay these new voices thanks to the brave and noble soldiers who sustain the project through purchased subscriptions.
If you find today’s dispatch informative, entertaining, or hopefully entertainingly informative… we’d be honored if you considered this a divine sign to throw some rubies into our coffers to keep the lights on:
False Flags & Fear Mongering: The Strategy Group’s manufactured monopoly by the Elephant in the Room
COLUMBUS — In the modern campaign industry, fear is the ultimate commodity.
A candidate who believes they are cruising to an easy victory stops spending money, closes their checkbook, and scales back their operations. But a candidate who believes they are locked in a margin-of-error dogfight does the opposite: they panic, redouble their fundraising efforts, and pour massive amounts of capital back into the hands of their general consultants.
In Ohio, a single political consulting powerhouse has effectively cornered the market on this specific brand of campaign anxiety. The Strategy Group, operating out of Columbus, has cemented its position as the undisputed preferred vendor for the state’s legislative Republican establishment.
Backed by institutional monopolies with the Ohio House Republican Organizational Committee (OHROC) and the Republican Senate Campaign Committee (RSCC), the firm is compensated to handle the data, messaging, and voter contact for nearly every Republican incumbent across both legislative chambers.
But a devastating cache of twelve leaked internal polling memos obtained by The Rooster from recent legislative cycles raises an alarming, multi-million-dollar question for the state’s legislative majorities:
Is The Strategy Group actually measuring public sentiment, or are they deliberately utilizing deeply flawed, unscientific methodologies to manufacture close races, manipulate safe incumbents, and keep their own pockets lined with defensive campaign cash?
A Statistical Mirage
To the public, vulnerable incumbents, and caucus leadership funding its operation, The Strategy Group boasts of a sophisticated, professional data-collection network.
The firm markets itself as a premier provider of highly accurate, actionable polling data with a standard, professionally acceptable margin of error of ±5.1%.
However, a confidential review of twelve distinct internal polling memos leaked from recent legislative races reveals a wildly different, mathematically absurd reality.
When stacked side-by-side against the actual, certified election results published by the Ohio Secretary of State, the firm’s data didn’t just miss the mark—it missed the entire target.
The Polling Performance Gap
The Strategy Group’s Public Precision Claim:
±5.1% Margin of Error
The Reality (Average of 12 internal memos):
±27% Margin of Error
Across all twelve examined memos, the firm’s projections consistently and dramatically underrepresented the true depth of the Republican lead. In district after district, the internal reports painted a grim picture of safe incumbents locked in high-stakes, neck-and-neck battles with underfunded challengers.
Yet, when Election Day arrived, these exact same “endangered” candidates went on to win their seats by massive, often double-digit blowouts. A margin of error averaging an astronomical 27 points goes far beyond typical polling volatility or minor statistical noise; in professional polling, it represents a total breakdown of data integrity.
Broken Methodology: The Unscientific Reality of SMS, LVR, and Digital “Live” Filtering
A closer examination of the leaked memos uncovers the precise root of this systemic statistical failure: a flawed, volatile mix of data-collection methodologies. Rather than relying on traditional, scientifically weighted live-caller telephone interviews across strict random-digit-dialing samples, the firm routinely utilized a hybrid blend of:
Mass SMS Text Messaging: Cold-outreach text blasts that suffer from notoriously low response rates and heavily skew toward specific, hyper-active demographic blocks.
Live Voice Recording (LVR): Automated interactive voice response (IVR) phone polling, which is legally restricted in its execution, is frequently ignored by modern
smartphone users and are incapable of vetting the respondent's true identity.
Digital “Live” Polling: An unorthodox, heavily criticized technique where a presenter or digital platform “polls” an unvetted, self-selecting audience that responds via digital devices or web-based interfaces.
Political scientists, demographic experts, and independent industry watchdogs criticize this specific combination of methodologies. By blending unvetted digital audiences with automated text and voice blasts, the system strips away the fundamental pillar of legitimate polling: rigorous, random probability sampling.
Instead of capturing a genuine, objective cross-section of likely voters within an Ohio legislative district, this methodology creates an unscientific feedback loop. It heavily over-samples hyper-partisan political insiders, unvetted digital participants, and highly reactive demographics while completely missing the quiet, moderate majority of the actual electorate.
The result is a highly distorted, unreliable dataset that consistently warps public opinion and presents a funhouse-mirror view of the political landscape.
The Financial Conveyor Belt: Turning a Supermajority into a Cash Cow
 | A guest post by
|