The 2026 Axios Harris Poll 100 reputation rankings
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This survey is the result of a partnership between Axios and Harris Poll to gauge the reputation of the most visible brands in America, based on 20 years of Harris Poll research.
The big picture: Axios and Harris Poll have been partnering on the poll since 2019.
Methodology: The Axios Harris Poll 100 is a trusted ranking of the reputations of companies most on the minds of Americans, with a framework Harris has used since 1999. The survey findings are a result of a three-step process.
- We first surveyed 6,226 Americans from a nationally representative online sample from Dec. 15 to 22, to understand the public's top-of-mind awareness of companies that either excel or falter in society. Respondents are asked which two companies — in their opinion — stand out as having the best reputation today and which two have the worst. All nominations are compiled into an aggregate list to determine the "most visible" companies. (Subsidiaries and brands are tallied within the parent company to create a total number of nominations for each company.)
- Once we have a list of the 100 most-visible brands in America, we then deployed a second online survey to analyze those companies further. The second survey of 18,523 Americans from a nationally representative sample ran from Feb. 13 and March 3. Respondents are first asked which of the 100 most visible brands from the first survey they are familiar with. From there, respondents are asked to rate three of the 100 most visible companies that they say they are "very familiar or somewhat with" on seven dimensions of reputation to calculate a Reputational Quotient, or RQ®, score for each. A formula is then used to calculate the RQ® score to aggregate all respondents rating that company, comprised of a statistically significant sample size of 325 respondents weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult public. The RQ® score determines the ranking of each brand in The Axios Harris Poll 100.
- Lastly, we asked a third and final set of different respondents in a separate set of online surveys about contextual questions on topics related to brands and politics. The contextual findings were conducted online over two waves from April 9 to 11 and May 7 to 9 among two nationally representative samples of 2,028 and 2,148 U.S. adults, respectively.
The fine print: The sampling precision of Harris online polls is measured by using a Bayesian credible interval. For this study, the data for this population is accurate to within +/- 2.5 percentage points for each wave using a 95% confidence level.
Zoom out: The Harris Poll refined its Reputation Quotient model in 2026 to better reflect today's fast-moving corporate environment.
- Trust, Character, and Business Trajectory remain foundational cornerstones to our reputation assessment, while Relevance has been added to modernize the model and reflect how meaningful and present a company is in today's society.
- Growth, Innovation, Values, and Good Causes attributes were removed from the previous model.
- Several iterations of the model were rigorously tested by The Harris Poll's analytics team to ensure results correlate strongly with the RQ model our partners have trusted for decades. On average, overall company scores in 2026 differ 0.1 points from the previous model.
