The Pittsburgh Press (August 20, 1944)
Gallup: Opinion polls are authentic
Founder tells how they work
By Roger H. Wood
In this 1944 election year, there could not have been a more timely book than George Gallup’s A Guide to Public Opinion Polls (Princeton).
Gallup, founder and director of the American Institute of Public Opinion, has given a comprehensive examination of the polls from many different points of view, drawing heavily upon his own personal experiences, but also explaining the work of other polling agencies.
He believes that the polls do show what the people are thinking on vital issues and that his object reporting and analysis of public opinion has helped to speed up the process of democracy. He says that by their very nature, modern sampling polls can and do separate the popularity of candidates from the issues. Polls can report which views of a candidate the public favors and which they reject.
Gallup gives the usual technical details of the polling program. He tells how interviewers are selected and how they are sent out into the field to talk to people, taking precautions to make certain that all classes are interviewed in proper proportion by occupation, by racial and religious groups, by politics and by sex.
For better or worse, public opinion polls are a fixture of American life. There have been 114 election surveys made by the American Institute of Public Opinion since its founding by Gallup in 1935 and since 1940, the average error in the results has been less than 2.5 percent. In the New York state election of 1940, just 200 people were interviewed in one of the polls. A Dewey victory was predicted and the results were within five percent of the actual vote on Election Day.
Gallup also explains the workings of other surveys. Especially interesting is his view on the Literary Digest forecast from the results of millions of mailed ballots of the election of Landon in 1936. The error was 19 percent. Gallup says that the sample was limited largely to the upper half of the voting population and did not catch any trend in sentiment taking place during the last two months of the campaign.
Some may say that the poll predictions influence voters to be on the winning bandwagon. But Gallup says:
There is no general tendency for winning candidates to increase their lead after poll results have been announced.