Understanding the Gallup Organization in the light of the Bush 55%, Kerry 42% poll results released today
Background
Bush leads Kerry 55/42 in Gallup Poll. How are we to interpret this; what level of confidence should we have in it?
At first blush, the methodology seems not too different from the poll I trashed by Pew below. The Pew poll seemed so counter-intuitive that I knew it was screwed up. Yet Gallup also assumes 55% voter turnout, which is too high, so the internals need to be thoroughly scrutinized. Gallup is helpful in one regard, however, in that its results have an easy interpretation. Voters under 50 make up the largest portion of the group which has been moving towards Bush for some time.
But maybe the differnce between Gallup and Pew is in part that Gallup is in business to make money, and to build a global brand name based on accuracy.
Gallup’s Distant and Recent History
The company’s philosophy was set early, and aimed at establishing a sterling brand name for Gallup:
As a pioneering pollster, company founder Dr. George Gallup determined that in seeking the truth, that is, the actual “will” of the people, his guiding principle would be independence. To ensure his independence, and therefore his 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. Adhering to this principle, The Gallup Organization has turned down thousands of requests for surveys from organizations representing every shade of the political spectrum and with every kind of special agenda.
Gallup was an ad man from Young & Rubicam, and had James Olgilvy as an early associate at Gallup. Olgilvy went on to founfd his own ad agency, Olgilvy and Mather. These were serious businessmen.
The 1988 LBO of Gallup
Gallup died in 1984, and four years later, the company was acquired by an employee-owned firm in Nebraska called Selection Research, a firm speacializing in assessing the “fit” between organizations and the talent they need. SRI was founded by Donald O. Clifton, apparently the father of Gallup CEO Jim Clifton, and an author and philanthropist.
Jim Clifton embarked on an ambitious expansion program, broadening the firm’s mission, increasing billing tenfold and moving into 20 countries.
Current Status of Gallup
Jim Clifton is a student of Deming and the other gurus of process improvement and corporate excellence. Here’s a revealing bit from an interview he gave in 2003 to Media Bistro:
When Dr. Gallup was leading the company, politics was what governed democracy. He had tools and techniques to access public opinion and ways to hear the voice of the electorate that was reported leadership. Now, 70 years since he founded it, free enterprise is as or more important than politics in what rules the world. So we’ve just taken the tools that he invented and in addition to the electorate we’ve applied them to customers and then to employees. You know all of us are governed, lead, or managed by politicians or by CEOs or by our managers, so we’ve just added those two other electorates: customers and employees.
So Clifton has a big, broad-based business and is not a political hack, or a dependent on the largesse of a political party. (You can learn more about his philosophies of customer service and profitability by following the links in this sentence.)
Conclusion
For starters, regarding Pew, always remember to be skeptical any results you get from a non-profit anything. You don’t know where guys like that are coming from (probably the left, however), what their agenda is, etc. This is also true of institutions that try to act like non-profits, like CBS news (“Courage!”).
Gallup has a mighty brand name, and a CEO who looks mighty ambitious to expand that name and ithe Gallup activities globally. From the interview again:
So do you think old George would have been pleased with this move?
I think he’d be real pleased. His said that if democracy is about the will of the people, somebody ought to go out and find out what that will is. He never said officials should necessarily vote the will, because the leaders have to vote their values and all that kind of thing. But he said that if leaders have polls—and they all do—he said that you’ve got question the integrity of democracy if people can’t have polls that are as competent as the polls the leaders have. Otherwise you have to ask yourself, what are they keeping secret? So why would we keep it a secret from the man on the street, what the rest of the country is thinking, so only the leaders would know? Dr. Gallup had a great mission and that was why he published polls, that’s why they wouldn’t work for a president like other would, because he wanted the polls for the man on the street. So now with the new application that we have, I think that he would love it, because now more than ever people can use the Gallup Poll.
George Gallup made a name for himself in polling by famously calling the 1936 election for FDR over Alf Landon, who had been favored in a Literary Digest poll to win. It seems pretty clear that they don’t want to screw the pooch in 2004.