George Gallup: Iowa Time Machine July 26, 1984

Iowa Time Machine ⏰: On July 26, 1984, the founder of the American Institute of Public Opinion (better known as the Gallup Poll), George Gallup, passed away. From Jefferson to Princeton, from the Daily Iowan to the American Institute of Public Opinion, Gallup turned a childhood in “utterly normal Iowa” into a global revolution in the way democracies listen to their citizens.

George Horace Gallup was born in Jefferson, Iowa, in Greene County, in November 1901, and spent his early years on the family dairy farm, where he and his brother helped run a small milking operation. That work financed clothing and supplies and, in high school, gave him the means to pay for a football team when the school dropped the sport during World War I, prompting classmates to describe him as a “nervy little fighter.”

After enrolling at the State University of Iowa in 1919, he became editor of the Daily Iowan in 1921, turning it into a full daily and gaining a reputation for sharply written editorials on campus politics, Iowa’s reputation, sex education, and student radicalism. Graduate study in psychology beginning in 1923 intertwined with teaching journalism, supervising student publications, and founding the Quill and Scroll Society, while his thesis on successful salespeople at Killian’s Department Store and his “Iowa method” survey of Des Moines Register and Tribune readers signaled a growing commitment to systematic opinion research.

Gallup’s movement from the Iowa campus to national prominence followed a path through Des Moines and Chicago into the world of advertising and media in New York. The Cowles family recruited him to head Drake University’s journalism department beginning in 1929 and to continue survey work for the Register and Tribune, after which he briefly taught at Northwestern before accepting a position with Young and Rubicam in 1932 that blended academic insight with market research. In 1935, he partnered with Harry Anderson to found the American Institute of Public Opinion in Princeton, New Jersey, launching the Gallup Poll and its “America Speaks” column. In the 1936 presidential election, he famously predicted Franklin Roosevelt’s victory. #Iowa #OTD #History #Polls #Politics