George H. Gallup House

This house was the boyhood home of statistician George Gallup (1901-1984), who pioneered public polling techniques that are still used today. Gallup founded the American Institute of Public Opinion in 1935, which later became Gallup, Inc. and remains one of the leading polling companies in the world. In addition to its association with Gallup, the house itself is significant architecturally. Erected in 1902, it is one of twenty-two octagon houses in Iowa and incorporates Queen Anne and Neoclassical elements in its design. It appears to be open to the public on occasion and available to rent for events and overnight stays. Gallup's father, George, who was avid proponent of octagon houses, built the home. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1985.

George Gallup was born on November 18, 1901 in Jefferson and grew up on a dairy farm. He was an excellent student and worked many jobs as a teenager, including delivering milk. While in high school, he started a newspaper and played football and basketball. After the coach was drafted into World War I, Gallup supplied the teams' uniforms and became the coach.

Gallup enrolled at the University of Iowa where he studied journalism and earned his bachelor's degree (1923), master's degree (1925), and a Ph.D in psychology (1928). It was during these years that he started to develop techniques that examined public opinion by measuring readers' interest in magazines and newspaper features. His Ph.D. thesis was titled “An Objective Method for Determining Reader Interest in the Content of a Newspaper.” After receiving his doctorate, Gallup taught journalism at Drake University (he was also the head of the journalism department) and then at Northwestern University and Columbia University. Around this time, he conducted the first national survey of magazines to determine what the best performing ads were.

His work attracted the attention of the New York City advertising firm Young & Rubicam, which hired him in 1932 to lead the marketing and copy research departments. There, Gallup created the first radio audience measuring technique; the impact method, which measures the effectiveness of television and print advertising (it is still used today); and a research program for movie studios to predict box office receipts. Also in 1932, Gallup conducted the first scientific political poll that successfully predicted the election of his mother-in-law, Ola Babcock Miller, as the new Iowa Secretary of State. This marked the beginning of his interest in political polling. Then, as noted above, three years later he established the American Institute of Public Opinion.

Gallup's big break came in 1936 when he correctly predicted that Franklin Delano Roosevelt would win the presidential election. A poll conducted by the a national magazine called The Literary Digest, which was well respected at the time, predicted that Roosevelt's opponent, Alf Landon, would win. Gallup's success gave him national credibility and soon "Gallup" became a household name. However, in 1948, Gallup wrongly predicted that Thomas Dewey would defeat Harry S. Truman in the 1948 presidential election. Gallup surmised that the error was the result of ending the polling three weeks before the election, assuming that voters would not change their minds.

Despite this setback, Gallup continued his polling work and his reputation remained strong. In the coming years he would establish a number of organizations including the Gallup International Association, the Market Research Council, and the National Council on Public Polls. He also founded many polling organizations in other countries. In 1958, he consolidated all of these organizations into Gallup, Inc., which is also referred to as The Gallup Organization. Gallup also did private polling for candidates, which garnered a significant amount of criticism. Eventually, Gallup ended this practice to be strictly nonpartisan.

Gallup was very interested in the social welfare of people around the world and believed that solutions could be discovered by understanding what people thought and felt. To this end, in 1976 he launched a large project to study the quality of life around the world. In the late 1970s Gallup conducted an international study examining people's social, moral, and religious attitudes.

Gallup served as chairman of the board of The Gallup Organization and chairman emeritus of the Gallup & Robinson, which was a marketing research firm he founded in 1948. He died in July 1984 of a heart attack in his summer home in Switzerland. He was buried in Princeton Cemetery in Princeton, New Jersey.

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