George Horace Gallup (November 18, 1901 – July 26, 1984) was an American pioneer of survey sampling techniques and inventor of the
Gallup pollThe Gallup Poll is the division of Gallup that regularly conducts public opinion polls in more than 140 countries around the world. Gallup Polls are often referenced in the mass media as a reliable and objective measure of public opinion...
, a successful
statistical methodStatistics is a branch of mathematics concerned with collecting and interpreting data. According to other definitions, it is a mathematical science pertaining to the collection, analysis, interpretation or explanation, and presentation of data. Statisticians improve the quality of data with the...
of
survey samplingIn statistics, survey sampling describes the process of selecting a sample of elements from a target population in order to conduct a survey.A survey may refer to many different types or techniques of observation, but in the context of survey sampling it most often refers to a questionnaire used to...
for measuring public opinion.
Gallup is a graduate of The Lawrenceville School and the
University of IowaThe University of Iowa is a public research university located in Iowa City, Iowa. The university is organized into eleven colleges granting undergraduate, graduate, and professional degrees...
, where he was a football player and editor of school paper
The Daily IowanThe Daily Iowan is an independent, 19,500-circulation daily student newspaper serving Iowa City and the University of Iowa community. It has consistently won a number of collegiate journalism awards, including multiple National Pacemaker Awards, and is generally regarded as one of the finest...
. He earned his B.A. in 1923, his M.A. in 1925 and his Ph.D.
I could prove God statistically. Take the human body alone—the chances that all the functions of an individual would just happen is a statistical monstrosity.
Polling is merely an instrument for gauging public opinion. When a president or any other leader pays attention to poll results, he is, in effect, paying attention to the views of the people. Any other interpretation is nonsense.
George Horace Gallup (November 18, 1901 – July 26, 1984) was an American pioneer of survey sampling techniques and inventor of the
Gallup pollThe Gallup Poll is the division of Gallup that regularly conducts public opinion polls in more than 140 countries around the world. Gallup Polls are often referenced in the mass media as a reliable and objective measure of public opinion...
, a successful
statistical methodStatistics is a branch of mathematics concerned with collecting and interpreting data. According to other definitions, it is a mathematical science pertaining to the collection, analysis, interpretation or explanation, and presentation of data. Statisticians improve the quality of data with the...
of
survey samplingIn statistics, survey sampling describes the process of selecting a sample of elements from a target population in order to conduct a survey.A survey may refer to many different types or techniques of observation, but in the context of survey sampling it most often refers to a questionnaire used to...
for measuring public opinion.
Gallup is a graduate of The Lawrenceville School and the
University of IowaThe University of Iowa is a public research university located in Iowa City, Iowa. The university is organized into eleven colleges granting undergraduate, graduate, and professional degrees...
, where he was a football player and editor of school paper
The Daily IowanThe Daily Iowan is an independent, 19,500-circulation daily student newspaper serving Iowa City and the University of Iowa community. It has consistently won a number of collegiate journalism awards, including multiple National Pacemaker Awards, and is generally regarded as one of the finest...
. He earned his B.A. in 1923, his M.A. in 1925 and his Ph.D. in 1928.
In 1936, his new organization achieved national recognition by correctly predicting, from the replies of only 5,000 respondents, that Franklin Roosevelt would defeat
Alf LandonAlfred "Alf" Mossman Landon was an American Republican politician, who served as Governor of Kansas from 1933–1937. He was best known for being the Republican Party's nominee for President of the United States, defeated in a landslide by Franklin D...
in the U.S. Presidential election. This was in direct contradiction to the widely respected
Literary DigestThe Literary Digest was an influential general interest weekly magazine published by Funk and Wagnalls. Founded by Isaac Kauffman Funk in 1890, it eventually merged with two similar weekly magazines, Public Opinion and Current Opinion....
magazine whose poll based on over two million returned questionnaires predicted that Landon would be the winner. Not only did Gallup get the election right, he correctly predicted the results of the
Literary Digest poll as well using a random sample smaller than theirs but chosen to match it.
Twelve years later, his organization had its moment of greatest ignominy, when it predicted that
Thomas DeweyThomas Edmund Dewey was governor of New York . In 1944 and 1948, he was the Republican candidate for President, but lost both times. He led the liberal faction of the Republican Party, in which he fought conservative Ohio Senator Robert A. Taft...
would defeat
Harry S. TrumanHarry S. Truman was the 33rd President of the United States . As President Franklin D. Roosevelt's third vice-president and the 34th Vice President of the United States, he succeeded to the presidency on April 12, 1945, when President Roosevelt died less than three months after beginning his...
in the 1948 election, by five to 15 percentage points. Gallup believed the error was mostly due to ending his polling three weeks before Election Day.
In 1948, with
Claude E. RobinsonClaude E. Robinson was an American pioneer in advertising research and opinion survey research techniques. Along with George Gallup, he was instrumental in developing many scientific sampling techniques that were later used in Gallup polls and other public opinion research surveys.- Life :Claude...
, he founded Gallup and Robinson, Inc., an
advertising researchAdvertising research is a specialized form of marketing research conducted to improve the efficiency of advertising. According to MarketConscious.com, “It may focus on a specific ad or campaign, or may be directed at a more general understanding of how advertising works or how consumers use the...
company.
In 1958, Gallup grouped all of his polling operations under what became
The Gallup OrganizationThe Gallup Organization provides a variety of management consulting, human resources and statistical research services. It has over 40 offices in 27 countries. World headquarters are in Washington, D.C.; operational headquarters are in Omaha, Nebraska...
.
Gallup died of a
heart attackMyocardial infarction or acute myocardial infarction , commonly known as a heart attack, is the interruption of blood supply to part of the heart, causing some heart cells to die...
at his summer home in
TschingelThe Tschingel is a mountain in the Bernese Alps in Switzerland.-External links:*...
, a village in the
Bernese OberlandThe Bernese Oberland is the higher part of the canton of Bern, Switzerland, in the southern end of the canton: The area around Lake Thun and Lake Brienz, and the valleys of the Bernese Alps .The Flag of the Bernese Oberland consists of a black eagle in a gold field The Bernese Oberland (Bernese...
of
SwitzerlandSwitzerland , officially the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 states named cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities...
. He was buried in
Princeton CemeteryPrinceton Cemetery is located in Borough of Princeton, New Jersey. It is owned by the Nassau Presbyterian Church. John F. Hageman in his 1878 history of Princeton, New Jersey refers to the cemetery as: "The Westminster Abbey of the United States."...
.
See also
- Approval rating
In the United States, presidential job approval ratings were introduced by George Gallup in the late 1930s to gauge public support for the president during his presidency. An approval rating is a percentage determined by a polling which indicates the percentage of respondents to an opinion poll...
- The Gallup Organization
The Gallup Organization provides a variety of management consulting, human resources and statistical research services. It has over 40 offices in 27 countries. World headquarters are in Washington, D.C.; operational headquarters are in Omaha, Nebraska...
- Gallup & Robinson
Gallup & Robinson is an independent marketing research firm specializing in advertising research. Founded in 1948, in Princeton, New Jersey by Dr. George Gallup and Dr...
- George H. Gallup House
The George H. Gallup House built in 1901 is an historic octagonal house located at 703 South Chestnut Street in Jefferson, Iowa. It was the birthplace and boyhood home of Dr...
External links