Overview of the Gallup Organization
Gallup, Inc. is a research-based performance-management consulting company. Originally founded by George Gallup in 1935, the company became famous for its public opinion polls, which were conducted in the United States and other countries. Today, Gallup has more than 40 offices in 27 countries. The world headquarters are located in Washington, D.C. , while the operational headquarters are in Omaha, Nebraska. Its current Chairman and CEO is Jim Clifton.
The Gallup Organization
The Gallup, Inc. world headquarters in Washington, D.C. The National Portrait Gallery can be seen in the reflection.
History of Gallup
George Gallup founded the American Institute of Public Opinion, the precursor to the Gallup Organization, in Princeton, New Jersey in 1935. He wished to objectively determine the opinions held by the people. To ensure his independence and objectivity, Dr. Gallup resolved that he would undertake no polling that was paid for or sponsored in any way by special interest groups such as the Republican and Democratic parties, a commitment that Gallup upholds to this day.
In 1936, Gallup successfully predicted that Franklin Roosevelt would defeat Alfred Landon for the U.S. presidency; this event quickly popularized the company. In 1938, Dr. Gallup and Gallup Vice President David Ogilvy began conducting market research for advertising companies and the film industry. In 1958, the modern Gallup Organization was formed when George Gallup grouped all of his polling operations into one organization. Since then, Gallup has seen huge expansion into several other areas.
The Gallup Poll
The 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 audience measurement of public opinion. Gallup Poll results, analyses, and videos are published daily on Gallup.com in the form of data-driven news. The poll loses about $10 million a year but gives the company the visibility of a very well-known brand.
Historically, the Gallup Poll has measured and tracked the public's attitudes concerning virtually every political, social, and economic issue of the day, including highly sensitive and controversial subjects. In 2005, Gallup began its World Poll, which continually surveys citizens in more than 140 countries, representing 95% of the world's adult population. General and regional-specific questions, developed in collaboration with the world's leading behavioral economists, are organized into powerful indexes and topic areas that correlate with real-world outcomes.
Reception of the Poll
The Gallup Polls have been recognized in the past for their accuracy in predicting the outcome of United States presidential elections, though they have come under criticism more recently. From 1936 to 2008, Gallup correctly predicted the winner of each election--with the notable exceptions of the 1948 Thomas Dewey-Harry S. Truman election, when nearly all pollsters predicted a Dewey victory, and the 1976 election, when they inaccurately projected a slim victory by Gerald Ford over Jimmy Carter. For the 2008 U.S. presidential election, Gallup correctly predicted the winner, but was rated 17th out of 23 polling organizations in terms of the precision of its pre-election polls relative to the final results. In 2012, Gallup's final election survey had Mitt Romney 49% and Barack Obama 48%, compared to the election results showing Obama with 51.1% to Romney's 47.2%. Poll analyst Nate Silver found that Gallup's results were the least accurate of the 23 major polling firms Silver analyzed, having the highest incorrect average of being 7.2 points away from the final result. Frank Newport, the Editor-in-Chief of Gallup, responded to the criticism by stating that Gallup simply makes an estimate of the national popular vote rather than predicting the winner, and that their final poll was within the statistical margin of error.
In addition to the poor results of the poll in 2012, many people are criticizing Gallup on their sampling techniques. Gallup conducts 1,000 interviews per day, 350 days out of the year, among both landline and cell phones across the U.S., for its health and well-being survey. Though Gallup surveys both landline and cell phones, they conduct only 150 cell phone samples out of 1000, making up 15%. The population of the U.S. that relies only on cell phones (owning no landline connections) makes up more than double that number, at 34%. This fact has been a major criticism in recent times of the reliability Gallup polling, compared to other polls, in its failure to compensate accurately for the quick adoption of "cell phone only" Americans.