Vorlesung 9

Geburt der modernen Demoskopie: George Gallup
„In 1933, the young George Gallup, who earned a PhD in psychology from a
small mid-western university and who combined careers in academia and
market research, decided to draw on both these fields to create public opinion
polling. He collected and studied detailed voting records for the U.S. over a
century, and sent out ballots to a small but carefully selected group of voters in
each state based on his analysis of past electoral behavior. He estimated results
for the 1934 congressional elections with great accuracy. He continued to
experiment with these hybrid methods of choosing purposive samples of voters
based on political geography, and founded the American Institute of Public
Opinion (AIPO) in 1935 whose goal was “impartially to measure and report
public opinion on political and social issues of the day without regard to the
rightness and wisdom of the views expressed.” AIPO conducted national public
opinion surveys using Gallup’s method of combining purposive sampling with
quotas for relatively small sizes (compared to the tens of thousands of
responses in straw polls) whose results he distributed to subscribing
newspapers in the form of press releases.“
Anthony Oberschall (2006): The historical roots of public opinion research. In: W.
Donsbach, M. Traugott (eds.): Handbook of Public Opinion Research. Beverly Hills,
London, New Delhi: Sage (in preparation)
Prof. Donsbach