There is virtually no other field of human endeavour where the prediction of outcomes is as critical as in today’s big-budget politics. Polling is specialised research and typically conducted by large consulting firms and academia through telephone surveys and questionnaires that target population samples based on demographic and psychographic criteria.
Polling most probably started in 1824 with “exit” or “Straw” Polls; impromptu interviews conducted by Newspapers with voters as they left the polling booth. However, George Gallup, who founded the American Institute of Public Opinion and The Gallup Poll in 1936 is credited as the father of scientific polling. The Gallup Poll was soon followed by The Public Opinion Quarterly of Princeton University in 1937, The Roper and Crossley Poll (FORTUNE Poll) in 1941, and the American Association for Public Opinion Research in 1947. Since then, pollsters have become an integral part of campaign teams, notably, Louis…
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