George Gallup - A Pollster is Born
Dr. George Gallup's Foundation in the Opinion Polling Industry
The pollster was born and raised in Iowa. Receiving his Ph.D. from the State University Of Iowa in 1928, he built a solid foundation and success as America's pollster.
Contemporary Americans have grown up with various pollsters gathering and packaging our opinions for public consumption. However, within the history public opinion of polling, one particular pollster stands out as a true pioneer in the field. One cannot think of polls without thinking of George Gallup. He has been referred to as “America’s oracle” and was called “the Babe Ruth of the polling profession” by Time magazine in1948. In essence, he was a true leader because he helped to define his profession and played a key role in the overall development of the polling industy.
Grown in the HeartlandThe early Iowa caucuses have become a familiar launching pad for presidential candidates hoping to get off to a good start in the long campaign to become their party's nominee. However, years before Iowa became a starting point for such high ambitions, it served as the place where George Gallup got off to a good start.
On November 18,1901 George Horace Gallup was born into a dairy farming family in Jefferson, Iowa. After his early years, he entered the State University of Iowa in 1918. Although his father went broke when George was in his sophomore year, he found ways to support himself while in school and spent ten years getting a solid education. Starting in his junior year, he served as editor of The Daily Iowan, the student newspaper. He eventually earned a Ph.D. in political science in 1928.
During his days at the University of Iowa, Gallup became interested in why people would read certain newspaper articles and not others. While he was working on his doctoral thesis, George teamed up with Mike Cowles, whose family owned the Des Moines Register (before being sold to Gannett). Cowles asked him to conduct scientific surveys of people who read newspapers, and it was then that the pollster was born.
Dr. George Gallup
In fact, the material for his thesis came from early experiments in polling the locals in Iowa City. It is reported that Gallup would confront people on the street with his newspaper and ask them point blank what they liked and disliked about the paper. He discovered that most readers favored the comics section to the front page and liked feature stories better than the news. It makes perfect sense that the title of his doctoral dissertation was A New Technique for Objective Methods for Measuring Reader Interest in Newspapers.
In 1929, on the eve of The Great Depression, Gallup left the University of Iowa to become head of the school of journalism at Drake University in Des Moines. During his time at Drake, he also seized the opportunity to run surveys of readers for several other U.S. newspapers. After two years, he left Drake and accepted a position as a professor in journalism and advertising at Northwestern University. However, he only stayed there one year, and in 1932, Dr. Gallup landed in the Manhattan advertising agency of Young & Rubicam, Inc. as head of their research division.
He worked with the firm for 16 years conducting public opinion surveys for their clients. While still working for Young & Rubicam, he founded the American Institute of Public Opinion in 1935. In just a few brief years from the time he received his doctorate, Dr. Gallup had positioned himself well for one of the most important polling adventures of his career.
After the 1936 presidential election, he would rise from running his minor polling service to becoming a major figure in the opinion polling industry. He took a substantial risk at this point in his career and it paid off in a big way. Eventually, he consolidated his polling efforts into the Gallup Organization, and his Gallup Polls through various affiliates, spread around the world becoming an international success.
Sources:
Moore, David W. The Superpollsters: How They Measure and Manipulate Public Opinion in America. New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 1995.
“The Black & White Beans.” Time 03 May 1948.
