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9781635761887

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From a veteran pollster, a thoughtful overview of public- opinion research and of those who helped make it a sociopolitical force in the US. In an opening chapter longer on prurient than substantive interest, Moore dashes Shere Hite's claims that her popular studies of human sexuality are based on representative samples. Then this director of the Univ. of New Hampshire's Survey Center Institute gets down to business, reviewing the careers and contributions of such pioneer pollsters as George Gallup (who made a name for himself by predicting FDR's 1936 electoral victory), Elmo Roper, and Archibald Grossley. Moore next focuses critical attention on latter-day notables who have served candidates and elected or appointed officials from the nation's two major political parties. Cases in point range from Louis Harris (JFK) through Pat Caddell (McGovern, Carter), Robert Teeter (Nixon, Ford, Bush), and Robert Wirthlin (Reagan). Covered as well are the canvasses conducted by media organizations (including CBS, The Los Angeles Times, and The Wall Street Journal), plus regional operations like Mervin Field's California Poll. Ultimately, Moore remains ambivalent about the uses to which his profession's powers have been put. He concedes, for example, that tricks of the trade (projective questions, dubious demographics, the ceaseless search for a truth the public will buy'') have enabled partisan pollsters to engage in low-road campaign tactics and have enhanced their capacity to employ statistics to manipulate the electorate. On the other hand, he argues, scientific polling has yielded a better understanding of public opinion's dynamics and what Americans think about important issues at any given time. An informed and informative appreciation of an influential industry -- Kirkus Reviews on The Superpollsters You will never regard political polls the same after reading David W. Moore's devastating inside account of their severe limitations and misapplications. This book should be required reading for journalists, political junkies, students, scholars, and citizens. -- Robert W. McChesney, author of The Political Economy of Media, on The Opinion Makers In this succinct and damning critique of the pitfalls of public opinion reporting, Moore, former senior editor of the Gallup Poll, argues that today's polls report the whims rather than the will of the people. ... Keen and witty throughout. --Publishers Weekly on The Opinion Makers A powerful argument that polls do not merely misinform us but pose a genuine, if subtle, threat to our democracy. --Mark Crispin Miller on The Opinion Makers The Opinion Makers is the most important book about the making of polls and public opinion that I have read. The account of how news stories drive polls should make us stop and ask whether the close relationship between the newsroom and polling operations is perhaps a bit too close. A must read. --W. Lance Bennett, director, Center for Communication and Civic Engagement, University of Washington, Seattle, on The Opinion Makers

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David W. Moore is an award-winning author, and currently a Senior Fellow at the Carsey Center for Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire. He is also the polling director and frequent columnist for iMediaEthics.org, for which he won the 2015 EPPY Award for his news/political commentary. For twenty-one years (1972-1993), he taught political science at the University of New Hampshire, and for the next thirteen years he worked at the Gallup Organization as a senior editor of the Gallup Poll. He became affiliated with UNH again in 2008. He is the author of three non-fiction trade books, and the co-author of one cross-over trade/academic book: The First Primary: New Hampshire’s Outsize Role in Presidential Nominations, with Andrew E. Smith (University Press of New England, 2015); The Opinion Makers: An Insider Exposes the Truth Behind the Polls (Beacon Press, hardback, 2008; revised edition in paperback 2009); How To Steal An Election: The Inside Story of How George Bush’s Brother and Fox Network Miscalled the 2000 Election and Changed the Course of History (Nation Books, 2006); and The Super Pollsters: How They Measure and Manipulate Public Opinion in America (Four Walls Eight Windows, 1992; trade paperback 1995). He has published essays and articles in The New York Times, The Nation, The Boston Globe, Public Opinion Quarterly, New York Newsday, Public Perspectives, and numerous other books and journals.

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