The Gallup Poll is named after its inventor, the American statistician, George Gallup. Dr. Gallup founded the American Institute of Public Opinion, the precursor of The Gallup Organization, in Princeton, New Jersey, in 1935. To ensure his independence and objectivity, Dr. Gallup resolved that he would undertake no polling that was paid for or sponsored in any way by special interest groups such as the Republican and Democratic parties, a commitment that Gallup upholds to this day.
Historically, the Gallup Poll has measured and tracked the public's attitudes concerning virtually every political, social, and economic issue of the day, including highly sensitive or controversial subjects. In 2005, Gallup began its World Poll, which continually surveys citizens in more than 140 countries, representing 95% of the world's adult population. General and regional-specific * questions, developed in collaboration with the world's leading behavioral economists, are organized into powerful indexes and topic areas that correlate with real-world outcomes.
Gallup Polls are best known for their accuracy in predicting the outcome of the current United States presidential election. A notable exception is the 1948 Thomas Dewey-Harry S. Truman election, where nearly all pollsters predicted a Dewey victory. The Gallup Poll also inaccurately projected a slim victory by Gerald Ford in 1976, where he lost to Jimmy Carter by a small margin.
In 2008, Gallup is interviewing no fewer than 1,000 U.S. adults each day, providing the most watched daily tracking poll of the race between John McCain and Barack Obama. Gallup publishes the results of its tracking survey in a three-day rolling average on Gallup.com.
In addition to political questions, Gallup has partnered with Healthways to track the well-being of U.S. residents through the surveys it conducts every day. Results of The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index will be released at the national, statewide, and local level through events and news articles published on Gallup.com