Gallup Organization (ch 11)

Truman holding the infamous misprinted newspaper that reported that he was beat by John Dewey, when in actuality, Truman bet Dewey. This win was miscalculated by many pollsters including the famous Gallup, who has been pretty accurate ever since.

      When watching the news, in one sitting you can catch at least one poll being flashed across the screen regarding some current event issue, whether it be middle class opinions on tax cuts for the wealthy, or even more relevant to recent current events, which presidential candidate do people find better fit to win? Most of these polls are conducted by one of the most famous polling organizations, the Gallup Organization. 

  Initially founded as the American Institute of Public Opinion in 1935, it was the correctly predicted 1936 win of FDR over Alfred Landon that set the name Gallup in our minds with any associations of polling.  Up until Gallup, Literary Digest, a popular magazine, was the leader in national presidential polling through their use of the straw poll. In that same 1936 election, Literary Digest predicted opposite of Gallup, and they predicted incorrectly, which shed light on the flaws of the polling methods of Literary Digest. This all paved the way for the Gallup Organization to reach to the top. 

      Since their mishap, the Gallup organization has since consistently predicted the winners of the presidential popular vote successfully. The organization now conducts public opinion polls in over 160 countries. Results of these polls are not only used for various mediums of news, but are also published on the Gallup website for all to see. Since the beginning, Gallup refused to work for partisan organizations or paid for by special interest groups, a mantra that the organization still continues to live by, in order to deliver guaranteed non-bias results. 

     Based on information given on the Gallup website (see direct link above), the organization prides itself on being completely scientific. Their methods include surveying and interviewing approximately 1,000 residents per country. According to them, "

Gallup uses telephone surveys in countries where telephone coverage represents at least 80% of the population. Where telephone penetration is less than 80%, Gallup uses face-to-face interviewing.", which ensures that they can get the best representative sample. They ask everything from over 100 global questions to inquiries about things that are region specific. To ensure accuracy, in areas with large populations such as a city, Gallup will oversample a group of 2,000 and in rare instances the sample is between 500 and 1,000. 

     In order to find their households, first Gallup selects PSU's (Primary Sampling Units) and are proportional to probabilities of population size and are stratified by clustering. The second step is to select households through random route procedures or if by telephone using RDD (Random Digit Dialing). Lastly through face-to-face or telephone methods, they select their respondents.

    How accurate are these polls? Well, the organization gives itself a 95% confidence interval with a margin of error of 

±3. Historically, these polls have served as an accurate representation of the population's opinions, as seen below in Gallup's United States presidential election predictions.

    Although the Gallup organization has established its credibility in almost a century of work, many people will often try to argue that the Gallup polls are bias. Arguments like these come up especially if the poll is indicating a result that is opposite of what the said critique is fighting for. Arguments like this were prevalent in the past election among conservatives who argued against the predictions that Barack Obama was going to get re-elected against hopeful Republican Willard "Mitt" Romney. Top conservative media leaders such as Rush Limbaugh made comments concerning this, as can be seen in the below video.

FAST FORWARD TO ABOUT 00:34 SECONDS

   Though many have tried to discredit the organization, Gallup continues to prove the doubters wrong, including Rush Limbaugh, who was faced with a win by President Obama, and the embarrassment of trying to discredit an organization which has more credibility than he himself does.