Tavern Research is a recurring professional-services node across Way Back, Contours and the WFF-backed 1861 Initiative

Tavern Research now emerges as a documented professional-services crossline across three branches of the network. A primary Way Back PAC FEC Schedule B filed July 30, 2025 reports a $15,000 payment to Tavern Research on April 24, 2025 for 'Research Services - Non-Contribution Account.' Separately, Tavern Research's own 2026 published polling identifies Contours Inc. as the commissioner of likely-voter surveys in Montana and Nebraska; Contours' own Sept. 4, 2025 IRS response had already disclosed that it conducts political research/polling through independent contractors and uses polling internally to inform future programmatic expenditure decisions. Current FEC-derived independent-expenditure data then show The 1861 Initiative—an organization whose initial WFF-related financial/research support is separately documented—reporting Tavern Research as the payee on a $450,000 July 31, 2026 digital-advertising estimate supporting Kansas Senate candidate Noah Taylor. This establishes repeated vendor/professional overlap: Way Back directly purchased research services from Tavern; Contours publicly commissioned Tavern polling; and a WFF-backed candidate-support super PAC later used Tavern for a large reported independent expenditure. It does NOT establish that Tavern shared data across clients, that the same research was reused, that WFF selected Tavern for the 1861 Initiative, or that Way Back/Contours/WFF coordinated strategy. The services also differ by transaction: Way Back explicitly reported 'Research Services,' Contours commissioned polling, while the 1861 FEC row labels the later expenditure 'Digital Advertising - Estimate.'