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History of Political Polls

George H. Gallup Sr. founded the Gallup Organization in 1935 and published the first Gallup Poll that same year (Honomichl 1990). Insisting on politically balanced reporting, Gallup refused to conduct surveys commissioned by Democratic or Republican parties. The Gallup Poll established a reputation for accurate election forecasting through the use of statistical sampling and survey best practices. In 1936, Gallup correctly predicted the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt over Alfred Landon, in contrast to the incorrect and now infamous forecast of the Literary Digest (Crossley 1937).

The Gallup Poll long held a prime position among pollsters, with telephone interviewing as its primary modality. The Gallup Poll achieved wide distribution of its election forecasts from 1936 onward across various media outlets nationwide. In 2012, the Gallup Poll incorrectly predicted that Mitt Romney would defeat Barack Obama, and, prior to the 2016 presidential election, the Gallup organization announced that it would no longer conduct “horse-race” polling (White 2015). Today Gallup continues to conduct surveys relating to voter opinions.

Honomichl (1990) noted that John F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign of 1960 was the first to use political polling as a planning tool. Kennedy employed Louis Harris as his main pollster. From the 1960s through 1980s, Peter D. Hart and Patrick H. Caddell were prominent pollsters working on behalf of Democratic candidates. Their counterparts on the Republican side were Peter M. Teeter and Richard B. Wirthlin.

Polling has undergone substantial changes over the years, as documented in the political science and survey research literature (Jacobs and Burns, 2004; Jacobs and Shapiro 1995, 2005; Hillygus 2011; Traugott 2014). Pollsters hope that respondents (or weighted groups of respondents) comprise a representative sample of likely voters. Political scientists often complain about polls, as do politicians and analysts.

References #

  • Crossley, Archibald M. 1937. “Straw Polls in 1936,” Public Opinion Quarterly, 1(1): 24–35. This is the original article about the Gallup and Literary Digest polls

  • Hillygus, D. Sunshine. 2011. “The Evolution of Election Polling in the United States,” The Public Opinion Quarterly, 75(5): 962–981.

  • Honomichl, Jack J. 1990. Honomichl on Marketing Research. Lincolnwood, IL: National Textbook Company. [ISBN-13: 978-0844230962]

  • Jacobs, Lawrence R., and Melanie Burns. 2004. “The Second Face of the Public Presidency: Presidential Polling and the Shift from Policy to Personality Polling,” Presidential Studies Quarterly, 34(3): 536–556.

  • Jacobs, Lawrence R., and Robert Y. Shapiro. 1995. “The Rise of Presidential Polling: The Nixon White House in Historical Perspective,” Public Opinion Quarterly, 59(2): 163–195.

  • Jacobs, Lawrence R., and Robert Y. Shapiro. 2005. “Polling, Politics, Media, and Election Campaigns,” Public Opinion Quarterly, 69(5): 635–641. Available online.

  • White, Daniel. 2015, October 9. “Here’s Why Gallup Won’t Poll the 2016 Election,” Time. Available online.

  • Traugott, Michael W. 2014. “Public Opinion Polls and Election Forecasting,” Political Science and Politics, 47(2): 342–344.

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