An opinion poll is a survey of public opinion from a particular sample. Opinion polls are usually designed to represent the opinions of a population by conducting a series of questions and then extrapolating generalities in ratio or within confidence intervals.

History

The first known example of an opinion poll was a local straw poll conducted by ''The Harrisburg Pennsylvanian'' in 1824, showing Andrew Jackson leading John Quincy Adams by 335 votes to 169 in the contest for the United States Presidency. Such straw votes gradually became more popular, but they remained local, usually city-wide phenomena. In 1916, the ''Literary Digest'' embarked on a national survey (partly as a circulation-raising exercise) and correctly predicted Woodrow Wilson's election as president. Mailing out millions of postcards and simply counting the returns, the ''Digest'' correctly called the following four presidential elections.

In 1936 however the ''Digest'' came unstuck. Its 2.3 million "voters" constituted a huge sample; however they were generally more affluent Americans who tended to have Republican sympathies. The ''Literary Digest'' was ignorant of this new bias. The week before election day, it reported that Alf Landon was far more popular than Franklin D. Roosevelt. At the same time, George Gallup conducted a far smaller, but more scientifically-based survey, in which he polled a demographically representative sample. Gallup correctly predicted Roosevelt's landslide victory. The ''Literary Digest'' soon went out of business, while polling started to take off.

Elmo Roper was another American pioneer in political forecasting using scientific polls. He predicted the reelection of President Franklin D. Roosevelt three times, in 1936, 1940, and 1944. Louis Harris had been in the field of public opinion since 1947 when he joined the Elmo Roper firm, then later became partner.

Gallup launched a subsidiary in the United Kingdom, where it correctly predicted Labour's victory in the 1945 general election, in contrast with virtually all other commentators, who expected a victory for the Conservative Party, led by Winston Churchill.

By the 1950s, various types of polling had spread to most democracies. In (post Saddam Hussein era) Iraq, surveys conducted soon after the 2003 war aimed to measure the feelings of Iraqi citizens regarding Saddam Hussein, post-war conditions, and the presence of US forces.

Sample and polling methods

Opinion polls for many years were maintained through telecommunications or in person-to-person contact. Methods and techniques vary, though they are widely accepted in most areas. Verbal, ballot, and processed types can be conducted efficiently, contrasted with other types of surveys, systematics, and complicated matrices beyond previous orthodox procedures. Opinion polling developed into popular applications through popular thought, although response rates for some surveys declined. Also, the following has also led to differentiating results: Some polling organizations, such as Angus Reid Strategies, YouGov and Zogby use Internet surveys, where a sample is drawn from a large panel of volunteers, and the results are weighed to reflect the demographics of the population of interest. In contrast, popular web polls draw on whoever wishes to participate, rather than a scientific sample of the population, and are therefore not generally considered professional.

Benchmark polls

A ''benchmark poll'' is generally the first poll taken in a campaign. It is often taken before a candidate announces their bid for office but sometimes it happens immediately following that announcement after they have had some opportunity to raise funds. This is generally a short and simple survey of likely voters.

A ''benchmark poll'' serves a number of purposes for a campaign, whether it is a political campaign or some other type of campaign. First, it gives the candidate a picture of where they stand with the electorate before any campaigning takes place. If the poll is done prior to announcing for office the candidate may use the poll to decide whether or not they should even run for office. Secondly, it shows them where their weaknesses and strengths are in two main areas. The first is the electorate. A ''benchmark poll'' shows them what types of voters they are sure to win, those who they are sure to lose, and everyone in-between those two extremes. This lets the campaign know which voters are persuadable so they can spend their limited resources in the most effective manner. Second, it can give them an idea of what messages, ideas, or slogans are the strongest with the electorate.

Brushfire polls

''Brushfire Polls'' are polls taken during the period between the ''Benchmark Poll'' and ''Tracking Polls''. The number of ''Brushfire Polls'' taken by a campaign is determined by how competitive the race is and how much money the campaign has to spend. These polls usually focus on likely voters and the length of the survey varies on the number of messages being tested.

''Brushfire polls'' are used for a number of purposes. First, it lets the candidate know if they have made any progress on the ballot, how much progress has been made, and in what demographics they have been making or losing ground. Secondly, it is a way for the campaign to test a variety of messages, both positive and negative, on themselves and their opponent(s). This lets the campaign know what messages work best with certain demographics and what messages should be avoided. Campaigns often use these polls to test possible attack messages that their opponent may use and potential responses to those attacks. The campaign can then spend some time preparing an effective response to any likely attacks. Thirdly, this kind of poll can be used by candidates or political parties to convince primary challengers to drop out of a race and support a stronger candidate.

Tracking polls

A ''tracking poll'' is a poll repeated at intervals generally averaged over a trailing window. For example, a weekly tracking poll uses the data from the past week and discards older data.

A key benefit of tracking polls is that the ''trend'' of a tracking poll (the change over time) corrects for bias: regardless of whether a poll consistently over or underestimates opinion, the trend correctly reflects increases or decreases .

A caution is that estimating the trend is more difficult and error-prone than estimating the level – intuitively, if one estimates the change, the difference between two numbers ''X'' and ''Y,'' then one has to contend with the error in both ''X'' and ''Y'' – it is not enough to simply take the difference, as the change may be random noise. For details, see t-test. A rough guide is that if the change in measurement falls outside the margin of error, it is worth attention.

Potential for inaccuracy

Polls based on samples of populations are subject to sampling error which reflects the effects of chance and uncertainty in the sampling process. The uncertainty is often expressed as a margin of error. The margin of error is usually defined as the radius of a confidence interval for a particular statistic from a survey. One example is the percent of people who prefer product A versus product B. When a single, global margin of error is reported for a survey, it refers to the maximum margin of error for all reported percentages using the full sample from the survey. If the statistic is a percentage, this maximum margin of error can be calculated as the radius of the confidence interval for a reported percentage of 50%. Others suggest that a poll with a random sample of 1,000 people has margin of sampling error of 3% for the estimated percentage of the whole population.

A 3% margin of error means that if the same procedure is used a large number of times, 95% of the time the true population average will be within the 95% confidence interval of the sample estimate plus or minus 3%. The margin of error can be reduced by using a larger sample, however if a pollster wishes to reduce the margin of error to 1% they would need a sample of around 10,000 people. In practice, pollsters need to balance the cost of a large sample against the reduction in sampling error and a sample size of around 500–1,000 is a typical compromise for political polls. (Note that to get complete responses it may be necessary to include thousands of additional participators.)

Another way to reduce the margin of error is to rely on poll averages. This makes the assumption that the procedure is similar enough between many different polls and uses the sample size of each poll to create a polling average. An example of a polling average can be found here: 2008 Presidential Election polling average. Another source of error stems from faulty demographic models by pollsters who weigh their samples by particular variables such as party identification in an election. For example, if you assume that the breakdown of the US population by party identification has not changed since the previous presidential election, you may underestimate a victory or a defeat of a particular party candidate that saw a surge or decline in its party registration relative to the previous presidential election cycle.

Over time, a number of theories and mechanisms have been offered to explain erroneous polling results. Some of these reflect errors on the part of the pollsters; many of them are statistical in nature. Others blame the respondents for not giving candid answers (''e.g.'', the Bradley effect, the Shy Tory Factor); these can be more controversial.

Nonresponse bias

Since some people do not answer calls from strangers, or refuse to answer the poll, poll samples may not be representative samples from a population due to a non-response bias. Because of this selection bias, the characteristics of those who agree to be interviewed may be markedly different from those who decline. That is, the actual sample is a biased version of the universe the pollster wants to analyze. In these cases, bias introduces new errors, one way or the other, that are in addition to errors caused by sample size. Error due to bias does not become smaller with larger sample sizes, because taking a larger sample size simply repeats the same mistake on a larger scale. If the people who refuse to answer, or are never reached, have the same characteristics as the people who do answer, then the final results should be unbiased. If the people who do not answer have different opinions then there is bias in the results. In terms of election polls, studies suggest that bias effects are small, but each polling firm has its own techniques for adjusting weights to minimize selection bias.

Response bias

Survey results may be affected by response bias, where the answers given by respondents do not reflect their true beliefs. This may be deliberately engineered by unscrupulous pollsters in order to generate a certain result or please their clients, but more often is a result of the detailed wording or ordering of questions (see below). Respondents may deliberately try to manipulate the outcome of a poll by e.g. advocating a more extreme position than they actually hold in order to boost their side of the argument or give rapid and ill-considered answers in order to hasten the end of their questioning. Respondents may also feel under social pressure not to give an unpopular answer. For example, respondents might be unwilling to admit to unpopular attitudes like racism or sexism, and thus polls might not reflect the true incidence of these attitudes in the population. In American political parlance, this phenomenon is often referred to as the Bradley Effect. If the results of surveys are widely publicized this effect may be magnified - a phenomenon commonly referred to as the spiral of silence.

Wording of questions

It is well established that the wording of the questions, the order in which they are asked and the number and form of alternative answers offered can influence results of polls. For instance, the public is more likely to indicate support for a person who is described by the operator as one of the "leading candidates". This support itself overrides subtle bias for one candidate, as does lumping some candidates in an "other" category or vice versa. Thus comparisons between polls often boil down to the wording of the question. On some issues, question wording can result in quite pronounced differences between surveys. This can also, however, be a result of legitimately conflicted feelings or evolving attitudes, rather than a poorly constructed survey.

A common technique to control for this bias is to rotate the order in which questions are asked. Many pollsters also split-sample. This involves having two different versions of a question, with each version presented to half the respondents.

The most effective controls, used by attitude researchers, are:

asking enough questions to allow all aspects of an issue to be covered and to control effects due to the form of the question (such as positive or negative wording), the adequacy of the number being established quantitatively with psychometric measures such as reliability coefficients, and

analyzing the results with psychometric techniques which synthesize the answers into a few reliable scores and detect ineffective questions.

These controls are not widely used in the polling industry .

Coverage bias

Another source of error is the use of samples that are not representative of the population as a consequence of the methodology used, as was the experience of the ''Literary Digest'' in 1936. For example, telephone sampling has a built-in error because in many times and places, those with telephones have generally been richer than those without.

In some places many people have only mobile telephones. Because pollsters cannot call mobile phones (it is unlawful in the United States to make unsolicited calls to phones where the phone's owner may be charged simply for taking a call), these individuals will never be included in the polling sample. If the subset of the population without cell phones differs markedly from the rest of the population, these differences can skew the results of the poll. Polling organizations have developed many weighting techniques to help overcome these deficiencies, to varying degrees of success. Studies of mobile phone users by the Pew Research Center in the US concluded that "cell-only respondents are different from landline respondents in important ways, (but) they were neither numerous enough nor different enough on the questions we examined to produce a significant change in overall general population survey estimates when included with the landline samples and weighted according to US Census parameters on basic demographic characteristics."

This issue was first identified in 2004, but came to prominence only during the 2008 US presidential election. In previous elections, the proportion of the general population using cell phones was small, but as this proportion has increased, the worry is that polling only landlines is no longer representative of the general population. In 2003, a 2.9% of households were wireless (cellphones only) compared to 12.8 in 2006. This results in "coverage error". Many polling organisations select their sample by dialling random telephone numbers; however, there is a clear tendency for polls which included mobile phones in their sample to show a much larger lead for Obama than polls that did not.

The potential sources of bias are: # Some households use cellphones only and have no landline. This tends to include minorities and younger voters; and occurs more frequently in metropolitan areas. Men are more likely to be cellphone-only compared to women. # Some people may not be contactable by landline from Monday to Friday and may be contactable only by cellphone. # Some people use their landlines only to access the Internet, and answer calls only to their cellphones.

Some polling companies have attempted to get around that problem by including a "cellphone supplement". There are a number of problems with including cellphones in a telephone poll: # It is difficult to get co-operation from cellphone users, because in many parts of the US, users are charged for both outgoing and incoming calls. That means that pollsters have had to offer financial compensation to gain co-operation. # US federal law prohibits the use of automated dialling devices to call cellphones (Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991). Numbers therefore have to be dialled by hand, which is more time-consuming and expensive for pollsters.

An oft-quoted example of opinion polls succumbing to errors was the UK General Election of 1992. Despite the polling organizations using different methodologies virtually all the polls in the lead up to the vote, and to a lesser extent exit polls taken on voting day, showed a lead for the opposition Labour party but the actual vote gave a clear victory to the ruling Conservative party.

In their deliberations after this embarrassment the pollsters advanced several ideas to account for their errors, including:

; Late swing : Voters who changed their minds shortly before voting tended to favour the Conservatives, so the error was not as great as it first appeared. ; Nonresponse bias : Conservative voters were less likely to participate in surveys than in the past and were thus under-represented. ; The Shy Tory Factor : The Conservatives had suffered a sustained period of unpopularity as a result of economic difficulties and a series of minor scandals, leading to a spiral of silence in which some Conservative supporters were reluctant to disclose their sincere intentions to pollsters.

The relative importance of these factors was, and remains, a matter of controversy, but since then the polling organizations have adjusted their methodologies and have achieved more accurate results in subsequent elections.

==Polling organizations== In Australia the most notable companies are:

Newspoll - published in News Limited's ''The Australian'' newspaper

Roy Morgan Research - published in the Crikey email reporting service

Galaxy Polling - published in News Limited's tabloid papers

AC Nielsen Polling - published in Fairfax newspapers

Ipsos and I-View

In Brazil the most notable companies are:

IBOPE (Instituto Brasileiro de Opinião Pública) which acronym has become the Brazilian household word for TV audience rating and a slang word that indicates that a meeting or similar function had significant attendance.

Datafolha

In Canada the most notable companies are:

Angus Reid Strategies

EKOS Research Associates

Environics Research Group

Harris/Decima

Ipsos-Reid

Léger Marketing

Nanos Research

In Egypt, the most notable polling organization is Opinion Poll Center

In Germany, notable polling organizations are

Allensbach Institute

Forsa institute

Infratest dimap

TNS Emnid

In Jordan the dominant organization is:

Knowledge World Center for Polls

In Iran, some notable polling organisations include: Ayandeh - closed in 2002 and director Abbas Abdi arrested

In New Zealand, some notable polling organisations include:

Colmar Brunton

UMR Insight

In Nigeria the most notable polling organisation is:

NOI-Gallup poll

In South Africa, some notable polling organisations include:

Ipsos Markinor who have conducted opinion polls since 1976.

Plus 94 Research - published in Sunday Times South Africa newspaper

In Ukraine, the most notable pollsters are: Research & Branding Group, widely published throughout Ukraine and Internationally. Works include exit polls and regular surveys of the public's political opinions Razumkov Centre A policy think tank also widely published throughout Ukraine SOCIS (Socis center for social and political studies)

In the United Kingdom, the most notable pollsters are:

ComRes, retained pollster for the BBC and ''The Independent''

Ipsos MORI (formerly MORI).

YouGov.

GfK NOP

ICM

Populus, official ''The Times'' pollster

In the United States, some notable companies include:

Gallup poll run by The Gallup Organization

Harris Poll

Ipsos

National Opinion Research Center

Nielsen ratings

Pew Research Center

Rasmussen Reports

Research 2000

YouGov.

Zogby International

In Spain:

Metroscopia

Sigma 2

TNS Demoscopia

Opina

Akra Delta

Netquest

ESEQ, Estudios sociales, políticos y de mercado

Ipsos

All the major television networks, alone or in conjunction with the largest newspapers or magazines, in virtually every country with elections, operate their own versions of polling operations, in collaboration or independently through various applications. One of the applications can be found on Facebook

Several organizations try to monitor the behavior of polling firms and the use of polling and statistical data, including the Pew Research Center and, in Canada, the Laurier Institute for the Study of Public Opinion and Policy.

Failures

The best-known failure of opinion polling to date in the United States was the prediction that Thomas Dewey would defeat Harry S. Truman in the 1948 US presidential election. Major polling organizations, including Gallup and Roper, indicated a landslide victory for Dewey.

In the United Kingdom, most polls failed to predict the Conservative election victories of 1970 and 1992, and Labour's victory in 1974. However, their figures at other elections have been generally accurate.

Influence

Effect on voters

By providing information about voting intentions, opinion polls can sometimes influence the behavior of electors, and in his book ''The Broken Compass'', Peter Hitchens asserts that opinion polls are actually a device for influencing public opinion. The various theories about how this happens can be split into two groups: bandwagon/underdog effects, and strategic ("tactical") voting.

A bandwagon effect occurs when the poll prompts voters to back the candidate shown to be winning in the poll. The idea that voters are susceptible to such effects is old, stemming at least from 1884; William Safire reported that the term was first used in a political cartoon in the magazine ''Puck'' in that year. It has also remained persistent in spite of a lack of empirical corroboration until the late 20th century. George Gallup spent much effort in vain trying to discredit this theory in his time by presenting empirical research. A recent meta-study of scientific research on this topic indicates that from the 1980s onward the Bandwagon effect is found more often by researchers.

The opposite of the bandwagon effect is the underdog effect. It is often mentioned in the media. This occurs when people vote, out of sympathy, for the party perceived to be "losing" the elections. There is less empirical evidence for the existence of this effect than there is for the existence of the bandwagon effect.

The second category of theories on how polls directly affect voting is called strategic or tactical voting. This theory is based on the idea that voters view the act of voting as a means of selecting a government. Thus they will sometimes not choose the candidate they prefer on ground of ideology or sympathy, but another, less-preferred, candidate from strategic considerations. An example can be found in the United Kingdom general election, 1997. As he was then a Cabinet Minister, Michael Portillo's constituency of Enfield Southgate was believed to be a safe seat but opinion polls showed the Labour candidate Stephen Twigg steadily gaining support, which may have prompted undecided voters or supporters of other parties to support Twigg in order to remove Portillo. Another example is the boomerang effect where the likely supporters of the candidate shown to be winning feel that chances are slim and that their vote is not required, thus allowing another candidate to win.

In addition, Mark Pickup in Cameron Anderson and Laura Stephenson's "Voting Behaviour in Canada" outlines three additional "behavioural" responses that voters may exhibit when faced with polling data.

The first is known as a "cue taking" effect which holds that poll data is used as a "proxy" for information about the candidates or parties. Cue taking is "based on the psychological phenomenon of using heuristics to simplify a complex decision" (243)

The second, first described by Petty and Cacioppo (1996) is known as "cognitive response" theory. This theory asserts that a voter's response to a poll may not line with their initial conception of the electoral reality. In response, the voter is likely to generate a "mental list" in which they create reasons for a party's loss or gain in the polls. This can reinforce or change their opinion of the candidate and thus affect voting behaviour.

Third, the final possibility is a "behavioural response" which is similar to a cognitive response. The only salient difference is that a voter will go and seek new information to form their "mental list," thus becoming more informed of the election. This may then affect voting behaviour.

These effects indicate how opinion polls can directly affect political choices of the electorate. But directly or indirectly, other effects can be surveyed and analyzed on all political parties. The form of media framing and party ideology shifts must also be taken under consideration. Opinion polling in some instances is a measure of cognitive bias, which is variably considered and handled appropriately in its various applications.

Effect on politicians

Starting in the 1980s, tracking polls and related technologies began having a notable impact on U.S. political leaders. According to Douglas Bailey, a Republican who had helped run Gerald Ford's 1976 presidential campaign, "It's no longer necessary for a political candidate to guess what an audience thinks. He can [find out] with a nightly tracking poll. So it's no longer likely that political leaders are going to lead. Instead, they're going to follow."

Regulation

Some jurisdictions over the world restrict the publication of the results of opinion polls in order to prevent the possibly erroneous results from affecting voters' decisions. For instance, in Canada, it is prohibited to publish the results of opinion surveys that would identify specific political parties or candidates in the final three days before a poll closes.

However, most western democratic nations don't support the entire prohibition of the publication of pre-election opinion polls; most of them have no regulation and some only prohibit it in the final days or hours until the relevant poll closes. A survey by Canada's Royal Commission on Electoral Reform reported that the prohibition period of publication of the survey results largely differed in different countries. Out of the 20 countries examined, three prohibit the publication during the entire period of campaigns, while others prohibit it for a shorter term such as the polling period or the final 48 hours before a poll closes.

See also

Deliberative opinion poll

Entrance poll

Exit poll

Open access poll

Push poll

Straw poll

Sample size determination

Footnotes

External references

Asher, Herbert: ''Polling and the Public. What Every Citizen Should Know'', fourth edition. Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 1998.

Bourdieu, Pierre, "Public Opinion does not exist" in ''Sociology in Question'', London, Sage (1995).

Bradburn, Norman M. and Seymour Sudman. ''Polls and Surveys: Understanding What They Tell Us'' (1988).

Cantril, Hadley. ''Gauging Public Opinion'' (1944).

Cantril, Hadley and Mildred Strunk, eds. ''Public Opinion, 1935-1946'' (1951), massive compilation of many public opinion polls from US, UK, Canada, Australia, and elsewhere.

Converse, Jean M. ''Survey Research in the United States: Roots and Emergence 1890-1960'' (1987), the standard history.

Crespi, Irving. ''Public Opinion, Polls, and Democracy'' (1989).

Gallup, George. ''Public Opinion in a Democracy'' (1939).

Gallup, Alec M. ed. ''The Gallup Poll Cumulative Index: Public Opinion, 1935-1997'' (1999) lists 10,000+ questions, but no results.

Gallup, George Horace, ed. ''The Gallup Poll; Public Opinion, 1935-1971'' 3 vol (1972) summarizes results of each poll.

Glynn, Carroll J., Susan Herbst, Garrett J. O'Keefe, and Robert Y. Shapiro. ''Public Opinion'' (1999) textbook

Lavrakas, Paul J. et al. eds. ''Presidential Polls and the News Media'' (1995)

Moore, David W. ''The Superpollsters: How They Measure and Manipulate Public Opinion in America'' (1995).

Niemi, Richard G., John Mueller, Tom W. Smith, eds. ''Trends in Public Opinion: A Compendium of Survey Data'' (1989).

Oskamp, Stuart and P. Wesley Schultz; ''Attitudes and Opinions'' (2004).

Robinson, Claude E. ''Straw Votes'' (1932).

Robinson, Matthew ''Mobocracy: How the Media's Obsession with Polling Twists the News, Alters Elections, and Undermines Democracy'' (2002).

Rogers, Lindsay. ''The Pollsters: Public Opinion, Politics, and Democratic Leadership'' (1949).

Traugott, Michael W. ''The Voter's Guide to Election Polls'' 3rd ed. (2004).

James G. Webster, Patricia F. Phalen, Lawrence W. Lichty; ''Ratings Analysis: The Theory and Practice of Audience Research'' Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2000.

Young, Michael L. ''Dictionary of Polling: The Language of Contemporary Opinion Research'' (1992).

Additional Sources

Walden, Graham R. ''Survey Research Methodology, 1990-1999: An Annotated Bibliography''. Bibliographies and Indexes in Law and Political Science Series. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc., 2002. xx, 432p.

Walden, Graham R. ''Public Opinion Polls and Survey Research: A Selective Annotated Bibliography of U.S. Guides and Studies from the 1980s''. Public Affairs and Administrative Series, edited by James S. Bowman, vol. 24. New York, NY: Garland Publishing Inc., 1990. xxix, 360p.

Walden, Graham R. ''Polling and Survey Research Methods 1935-1979: An Annotated Bibliography.'' Bibliographies and Indexes in Law and Political Science Series, vol. 25. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc., 1996. xxx, 581p.

External links

Polls from ''UCB Libraries GovPubs''

The Pew Research Center nonpartisan "fact tank" providing information on the issues, attitudes and trends shaping America and the world by conducting public opinion polling and social science research

"Use Opinion Research To Build Strong Communication" by Frank Noto

Public Agenda for Citizens nonpartisan, nonprofit group that tracks public opinion data in the United States

National Council on Public Polls association of polling organizations in the United States devoted to setting high professional standards for surveys

USA Election Polls tracks the public opinion polls related to elections in the US

Survey Analysis Tool based on A. Berkopec, ''HyperQuick algorithm for discrete hypergeometric distribution'', Journal of Discrete Algorithms, Elsevier, 2006.

"Poll Position - Issue 010 - GOOD", track record of pollsters for USA presidential elections in ''Good'' magazine, April 23, 2008.

Category:Types of polling Category:Survey methodology Category:Psychometrics Category:Public opinion Category:Sampling (statistics)

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Coordinates	40°26′30″N80°00′00″N
Name	Frank Luntz
Birth date	February 23, 1962
Nationality	American
Education	University of PennsylvaniaOxford University
Occupation	Communication Consultant and Political Pollster
Footnotes	}}

Frank I. Luntz (born February 23, 1962) is an American political consultant and pollster. His most recent work has been with the Fox News Channel as a frequent commentator and analyst, as well as running focus groups after presidential debates. Luntz's specialty is “testing language and finding words that will help his clients sell their product or turn public opinion on an issue or a candidate.” He is also an author of business books dealing with communication strategies and public opinion. Luntz's current company, The Word Doctors, specializes in message creation and image management for commercial and political clients.

Background

Luntz grew up in West Hartford, Connecticut, and graduated from Hall High School. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in History and Political Science from the University of Pennsylvania and received his Doctorate in Politics from Oxford University. He is unmarried.

Luntz has appeared as a consultant or panel member on a number of television news shows, including ''The Colbert Report'', ''Capital Gang'', ''Good Morning America'', ''Hannity'', ''Hardball with Chris Matthews'', ''Meet the Press'', ''PBS NewsHour'', ''Nightline'', ''The O'Reilly Factor'', ''Real Time With Bill Maher'', and ''The Today Show''. He has written op-eds for publications such as ''The Financial Times'', ''The Los Angeles Times'', ''The New York Times'', ''The Wall Street Journal'', and ''The Washington Post''.

He was an Adjunct Professor at the University of Pennsylvania from 1989 until 1996 and also taught at George Washington University and American University.

Use of language

Luntz frequently tests word and phrase choices using focus groups and interviews. His stated purpose in this is the goal of causing audiences to react based on emotion. "80 percent of our life is emotion, and only 20 percent is intellect. I am much more interested in how you feel than how you think." "If I respond to you quietly, the viewer at home is going to have a different reaction than if I respond to you with emotion and with passion and I wave my arms around. Somebody like this is an intellectual; somebody like this is a freak."

In an article in ''The New Yorker'' Luntz is quoted as saying, "The way my words are created is by taking the words of others.... I've moderated an average of a hundred plus focus groups a year over five years... I show them language that I've created. Then I leave a line for them to create language for me."

In a January 9, 2007, interview on Fresh Air with Terry Gross, Luntz redefined the term "Orwellian" in a ''positive'' sense, saying that if one reads Orwell's Essay On Language ''(presumably referring to Politics and the English Language)'', "To be 'Orwellian' is to speak with absolute clarity, to be succinct, to explain what the event is, to talk about what triggers something happening… and to do so without any pejorative whatsoever."

Luntz description of "Orwellian" is considered to contradict both its popularly defined meaning as well as that defined by George Orwell. Luntz believes that Orwell would not have approved of many of the uses to which his pseudonym is applied by quoting Orwell's essay "Politics and the English Language", where Luntz focuses on how Orwell derides the use of cliché and dying metaphors.

Luntz' description of his job revolves around exploiting the emotional content of language. "It's all emotion. But there's nothing wrong with emotion. When we are in love, we are not rational; we are emotional." "...my job is to look for the words that trigger the emotion." "We know that words and emotion together are the most powerful force known to mankind.."

Additionally in his January 9, 2007, interview on Fresh Air, Luntz discussed his use of the term, "energy exploration" (oil drilling). His research on the matter involved showing people a picture of current oil drilling and asking if in the picture it "looks like exploration or drilling." He said that 90 percent of the people he spoke to said it looked like exploring. "Therefore I'd argue that it is a more appropriate way to communicate." He went on to say "if the public says after looking at the pictures, that doesn't look like my definition of drilling—it looks like my definition of exploring—then don't you think we should be calling it what people see it to be, rather than adding a political aspect to it all?" Terry Gross responded: "Should we be calling it what it actually is, as opposed to what somebody thinks it might be? The difference between exploration and actually getting out the oil—they're two different things, aren't they?"

James L. Martin, chairman of the conservative 60 Plus Association, described Luntz's role as being that of pollster and popularizer of the phrase "death tax".

Martin gained an important ally in GOP pollster Frank Luntz, whose polling revealed that "death tax" sparked voter resentment in a way that "inheritance tax" and "estate tax" couldn't match. After all, who wouldn't be opposed to a "tax on death"? Luntz shared his findings with Republicans and included the phrase in the GOP's Contract with America. Luntz went so far as to recommend in a memo to GOP lawmakers that they stage press conferences "at your local mortuary" to dramatize the issue. "I believe this backdrop will clearly resonate with your constituents," he wrote. "Death is something the American people understand." Apparently, he's right. Spurred by Luntz, Republicans have employed the term "death tax" so aggressively that it has entered the popular lexicon. Nonpartisan venues like newspapers and magazines have begun to use it in a neutral context--a coup for abolitionists like Martin.

Publications

Luntz is the author of the 2007 New York Times Best Seller "Words That Work: It's Not What You Say, It's What People Hear." His most recent book, "What Americans Really Want ... Really: The Truth About Our Hopes, Dreams and Fears," climbed to #6 on the New York Times Business Best Sellers list. In March of 2011, Luntz released his book ''Win: The Key Principles to Take Your Business From Ordinary to Extraordinary''.

Representative work

Global warming

Although Luntz later tried to distance himself from the Bush administration policy, it was his idea that administration communications reframe "global warming" as "climate change" since "climate change" was thought to sound less severe. Luntz has since said that he is not responsible for what the Bush administration did after that time. Though he now believes humans have contributed to global warming, he maintains that the science was in fact incomplete, and his recommendation sound, at the time he made it.

In a 2002 memo to President George W. Bush titled "The Environment: A Cleaner, Safer, Healthier America", obtained by the Environmental Working Group, Luntz wrote: "The scientific debate is closing [against us] but not yet closed. There is still a window of opportunity to challenge the science....Voters believe that there is no consensus about global warming within the scientific community. Should the public come to believe that the scientific issues are settled, their views about global warming will change accordingly. Therefore, you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate, and defer to scientists and other experts in the field."

In 2010, Luntz announced new research that shows the American people are eager for Congress to act on climate legislation that would promote energy independence and a healthier environment. "Americans want their leaders to act on climate change – but not necessarily for the reasons you think," Luntz said. "A clear majority of Americans believe climate change is happening. This is true of McCain voters and Obama voters alike. And even those that don't still believe it is essential for America to pursue policies that promote energy independence and a cleaner, healthier environment." In reference to recent political events, Luntz added: "People are much more interested in seeing solutions than watching yet another partisan political argument."

2005 UK Conservative leadership election

In 2005 Luntz conducted a focus group broadcast on the Conservative leadership race on the BBC current affairs show ''Newsnight''. The focus group's overwhelmingly positive reaction to David Cameron was seen by many as crucial in making him the favorite in a crowded field. Cameron was the eventual victor. In March 2007, Newsnight invited him back to gauge comparative opinions on Cameron, Gordon Brown and Sir Menzies Campbell in the city of Birmingham.

2007 Irish general elections

Luntz led a focus group telecast with the Irish state broadcaster RTE to gather the opinions of the Irish people before the May 24, 2007 general elections. RTÉ hoped to show viewers some of the campaign techniques the political parties were using without their knowledge.

2007 Australian federal election

Another focus group of swing voters was analysed by Luntz in the lead-up to the November 2007 poll between the ruling Coalition and the opposition Labor party. Luntz noted that, like the Irish scenario, the Coalition was well established, presiding over the country for 11 years and overseeing continued economic growth for much of that period; and that unlike the lead-up to the Irish elections, Australia had a stronger and more popular opposition leader in Kevin Rudd: "This is much closer to the Irish election where the leader just barely scraped in, Bertie Ahern, because the economy was so good. But the big difference there was the opposition leader was not as good as Kevin Rudd." Luntz was brought in to conduct his research in a collaborative effort by Sky News Australia and ''The Australian'' newspaper.

2010 UK General Election

During the 2010 UK General Election, Luntz led focus groups during the Prime Ministerial debates between Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg, and wrote about his findings for the Sun newspaper, and also appeared on the BBCs Daily Politics.

Criticism

In 1997, he was reprimanded by the American Association for Public Opinion Research for refusing to release poll data to support his claimed results "because of client confidentiality". Diane Colasanto, who was president of the AAPOR when it reprimanded Luntz, said

}} In 2000 he was censured by the National Council on Public Polls "for allegedly mischaracterizing on MSNBC the results of focus groups he conducted during the [2000] Republican Convention." In September 2004, MSNBC dropped Luntz from its planned coverage of that year's presidential debate, following a letter from Media Matters that outlined Luntz's GOP ties and questionable polling methodology.

Luntz was awarded the 2010 PolitiFact Lie of the Year award for his promotion of the phrase 'government takeover' to refer to healthcare reform, starting in the spring of 2009. "'Takeovers are like coups,' Luntz wrote in a 28-page memo. 'They both lead to dictators and a loss of freedom.'" In an editorial response, the ''Wall Street Journal'' wrote that "PolitiFact's decree is part of a larger journalistic trend that seeks to recast all political debates as matters of lies, misinformation and 'facts,' rather than differences of world view or principles." "We have concluded it is inaccurate to call the plan a government takeover," the editors of PolitiFact announced.

Bibliography

Luntz, Frank. ''Candidates, Consultants, and Campaigns: The Style and Substance of American Electioneering''. New York: Blackwell, 1988.

Luntz, Frank. ''Words That Work: It's Not What You Say, It's What People Hear'' New York: Hyperion, 2007.

Luntz, Frank. ''What Americans Really Want...Really'' New York: Hyperion, 2009.

Luntz, Frank. ''Win: The Key Principles to Take Your Business from Ordinary to Extraordinary'' New York: Hyperion, 2011.

References

External links

Official Facebook Page

Luntz Global, Luntz's communications company

Frank Luntz at SourceWatch

Frank Luntz profile on NOW on PBS

Interview: Frank Luntz on ''The Persuaders'', PBS Frontline, November 9, 2004

Frank Luntz Accepts Global Warming Science, TreeHugger.com, June 19, 2006

Frank Luntz Explains 'Words That Work', NPR Fresh Air, January 9, 2007

How to speak Republican, interview with Katharine Mieskowski, ''Salon.com'', January 23, 2007

Frank Luntz Rides Again, Trudy Lieberman, ''Columbia Journalism Review'', December 10, 2010

Category:1962 births Category:University of Pennsylvania alumni Category:American statisticians Category:Living people Category:American public relations people Category:University of Pennsylvania faculty Category:American University faculty and staff Category:George Washington University faculty Category:Framing theorists Category:Alumni of the University of Oxford Category:People from West Hartford, Connecticut

sh:Frank Luntz

Coordinates	40°26′30″N80°00′00″N
name	Penn & Teller
birth name	Penn JilletteRaymond Joseph Teller
birth date	Penn Jillette (March 5, 1955) Teller (February 14, 1948)
residence	Las Vegas
othernames	Asparagus Valley Cultural Society
homepage	pennandteller.com
known for	MagicComedy }}

Penn & Teller (Penn Jillette and Teller) are Las Vegas headliners whose act is an amalgam of illusion and comedy. Penn Jillette is a raconteur; Teller generally uses mime while performing, although his voice can occasionally be heard throughout their performance. They specialize in gory tricks, exposing frauds, and performing clever pranks, and have become associated with Las Vegas, atheism, scientific skepticism, and libertarianism.

Careers

On 19 August 1975, Penn & Teller did their first show together at the Minnesota Renaissance Festival. Penn and Teller were introduced to one another by Weir Chrisimer. From the late 1970s through 1981, the three made up an act called "Asparagus Valley Cultural Society" which played in San Francisco at the Phoenix Theater. This act was sillier and less "edgy" than today's Penn & Teller act. Chrisimer helped to develop some bits that continued, most notably Teller's "Shadows" trick, which involves a single red rose.

By 1985, Penn & Teller were receiving rave reviews for their Off Broadway show and Emmy award-winning PBS special, ''Penn & Teller Go Public''. In 1987, they began the first of two successful Broadway runs. Through the late 1980s and early 1990s, the duo made numerous television appearances on ''Late Night with David Letterman'' and ''Saturday Night Live'', as well as ''The Tonight Show with Jay Leno'', ''Late Night with Conan O'Brien'', ''Today'', and many others.

Penn & Teller had national tours throughout the 1990s, gaining critical praise. They have also made television guest appearances on ''Babylon 5'' (as the comedy team ''Rebo and Zooty''), ''The Drew Carey Show'', a few episodes of ''Hollywood Squares'' from 1998 until 2004, ABC's ''Muppets Tonight'', FOX's ''The Bernie Mac Show'', an episode of the game show ''Fear Factor'' on NBC, NBC's ''The West Wing'', in a two-part episode of the final season of ABC's ''Home Improvement'' in 1998, four episodes during season 1 of ''Sabrina, the Teenage Witch'' in 1996, NBC's ''Las Vegas'', and FOX's ''The Simpsons'' episodes Hello Gutter, Hello Fadder and The Great Simpsina and ''Futurama'' film ''Futurama: Into the Wild Green Yonder'' in 2009. They also appeared as Three-card Monte scam artists in the music video for "It's Tricky" by Run-DMC in 1987, and were thrown out of a Las Vegas hotel room in the music video for "Waking Up in Vegas" by Katy Perry in 2009.

Their Showtime Network television show ''Bullshit!'' takes a skeptical look at psychics, religion, the pseudoscientific, conspiracy theories, and the paranormal. It has also featured critical segments on gun control, astrology, Feng Shui, environmental issues, PETA, weight loss, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the war on drugs.

On ''Bullshit!'', the duo describe their social and political views as libertarian.

They have also described themselves as teetotalers. Their book, ''Penn & Teller's How to Play in Traffic'', explains that they avoid absolutely all alcohol and other drugs, including caffeine, though they do appear to smoke cigarettes in some videos. Penn has said that he has never even tasted alcohol, and that his tolerance for certain drugs is so low that his doctor only had to administer a minute amount of anesthetic relative to what one would expect necessary for a man of his size to undergo surgery.

The pair have written several books about magic, including ''Penn & Teller's Cruel Tricks For Dear Friends'', ''Penn & Teller's How to Play with Your Food'', and ''Penn & Teller's How to Play in Traffic''. Since 2001, Penn & Teller have performed six nights a week (or as Penn puts it on ''Bullshit!'': "Every night of the week . . . except Fridays!") in Las Vegas at the Rio All Suite Hotel and Casino.

Penn Jillette hosted a weekday one-hour talk show on Infinity Broadcasting's Free FM radio network from January 3, 2006 to March 2, 2007 with cohost Michael Goudeau. He also hosted the game show ''Identity'', which debuted on December 18, 2006 on NBC.

Penn & Teller have also shown support for the Brights movement and are now listed on the movement's homepage under the Enthusiastic Brights section. According to an article in Wired magazine, their license plates are customized so they read, "Atheist" and "Godless", and when Penn signs autographs, he often writes down, "there is no God" with his signature.

Off-stage relationship

Penn Jillette has told interviewer Larry King that a big part of the duo's success and longevity is due to their never having been close friends. They enjoy working together immensely, but have little in common besides magic. As a result of their drastically different lifestyles and interests, they rarely socialize or interact when not working. Jillette believes that their partnership succeeds precisely because they give each other a great deal of space off-stage.

Tricks

Their tricks include Teller hanging upside-down over a cushion of spikes in a straitjacket, Teller submerged in a huge container of water, Teller being run over by an 18-wheel tractor-trailer, Teller swinging going through Penn's hands. Many of their effects rely heavily on shock appeal and violence, although presented in a humorous manner.

Sometimes, the pair will claim to reveal a secret of how a magic trick is done, but those tricks are usually invented by the duo for the sole purpose of exposing them, and therefore designed with more spectacular and weird methods than would have been necessary had it just been a "proper" magic trick. For example, in the "reveal" of one trick, while Teller waits for his cue, he reads magazines and eats a snack. Another example is their rendition of the cups and balls, using transparent cups.

Penn and Teller perform their own adaptation of the famous bullet catch illusion. Each simultaneously fires a gun at the other, through small panes of glass, and then "catches" the other's bullet in his mouth. They also have an assortment of card tricks in their repertoire, virtually all of them involving the force of the Three of Clubs on an unsuspecting audience member as this card is easy for viewers to identify on television cameras.

The duo will sometimes perform tricks that discuss the intellectual underpinnings of magic. One of their acts, titled "Magician vs. Juggler", features Teller performing card tricks while Penn juggles and delivers a monologue on the difference between the two: jugglers start as socially aware children who go outside and learn juggling with other children; magicians are misfits who stay in the house and teach themselves magic tricks out of spite.

In one of their most politically charged tricks, they make a U.S. flag seem to disappear by wrapping it in a copy of the United States Bill of Rights, and apparently setting the flag on fire, so that "the flag is gone but the Bill of Rights remains." The act may also feature the "Chinese bill of rights", presented as a transparent piece of acetate. They normally end the routine by restoring the unscathed flag to its starting place on the flagpole; however, on a TV guest appearance on ''The West Wing'' this final part was omitted.

One of their more recent tricks involves a powered nail gun with a quantity of missing nails from the series of nails in its magazine. Penn begins by firing several apparently real nails into a board in front of him. He then proceeds to fire the nailgun into the palm of his hand several times, while suffering no injuries. His pattern builds as he oscillates between firing blanks into his hand and firing nails into the board. While performing he states that the trick is merely memorization, and explains that the fact that he does not flinch when he could be firing a nail into his hand should be a sign that the trick is not actually dangerous. A later revision to the trick replaced the false claims of memorization with a more open explanation, allowing the audience to enjoy the rhythm of the nail gun without fear of a serious mishap.

A trick introduced in 2010 is a modern version of the bag escape, replacing the traditional sack with a black trash bag apparently filled with helium. Teller is placed in the bag which is then pumped full of helium and sealed by an audience member. For the escape, the audience are blinded by a bright light for a second and when they are able to see again, Teller has escaped from the bag and Penn is holding it, still full of helium, above his head, before releasing it to float to the ceiling. The duo had hoped to put the trick in their mini-tour in London; however, it was first shown to the public in their Las Vegas show on 18 August 2010. In June 2011, Penn and Teller performed this trick for the first time in the United Kingdom on their show ''Fool Us''.

Filmography

Film

! Year	! Film	! Role	! Notes
	''Penn & Teller Get Killed''	Themselves
	''Penn & Teller's Cruel Tricks for Dear Friends''	Themselves
		Themselves	Penn also co-directed the film

Television

! Year(s)	! Title	! Role	! Notes
1985	''Penn & Teller Go Public''	Themselves	On KCET Los Angeles
1985 - 1986	''Saturday Night Live''	Themselves	7 Episodes
1993	''FETCH! with Ruff Ruffman''	Themselves	They taught one of the show's contestants, Rubye, to perform magic tricks.
1994	''The Unpleasant World of Penn & Teller''	Themselves
1995	''Phobophilia''	Themselves
1995	''The Drew Carey Show''	Archibald Fenn & Geller	2 Episodes: "Drew Meets Lawyers" (1995) and "See Drew Run" (1997)
1995 - 2008	''The Tonight Show with Jay Leno''	Themselves	4 Episodes: 14 November 1995, 27 November 1998, 13 May 2004, & 25 November 2008
1996 & 1997	''Sabrina, the Teenage Witch''	Drell & Skippy	4 Episodes: "Pilot" (1996), "Terrible Things" (1996), "Jenny's Non-Dream" (1997), & "First Kiss" (1997)
1997	''Muppets Tonight''	Themselves	Episode: "The Gary Cahuenga Episode"
1997 - 2003	''Late Night with Conan O'Brien''	Themselves	3 Episodes: 16 October 1997, 7 June 2000, & 23 January 2003
1998	''Babylon 5''	Rebo & Zooty	Episode: "Day of the Dead"
1998 - 1999	''Penn & Teller's Sin City Spectacular''	Themselves	24 Episodes
1998 - 2000	''The Daily Show with Jon Stewart''	Themselves	2 Episodes: 13 August 1998 & 5 June 2000
1998 - 2004	''Hollywood Squares''	Themselves	60 Episodes
1999	''Home Improvement''	Themselves	2 Episodes: "Knee Deep"
1999 & 2011	''The Simpsons''	Themselves	2 Episodes: "Hello Gutter, Hello Fadder" (1999) and "The Great Simpsina" (2011)
2002	''Grand Illusions: The Story of Magic''	Themselves	Discovery Channel documentary: Penn & Teller present 200 years of the history of stage magic
2002	''Fear Factor''	Themselves	Episode: "Celebrity Fear Factor 3"
2003		Themselves	Episode: "Luck Be a Lady"
2003	''Penn & Teller's Magic and Mystery Tour''	Themselves	3 Part mini-series
2003	''The Bernie Mac Show''	Themselves	Episode: "Magic Jordan"
2003 - 2010		Themselves	85 Episodes
2004	''The West Wing''	Themselves	Episode: "In The Room"
2004 - 2010	''Last Call with Carson Daly''	Themselves	6 Episodes: 13 July 2004, 16 November 2005, 5 April 2007, 16 June 2008, 5 April 2010, & 5 May 2010
2007 & 2008	''Late Show with David Letterman''	Themselves	2 Episodes: #15.32 & #15.113
2009	''Futurama: Into the Wild Green Yonder''	Themselves
2009	The Great American Road Trip	Themselves	Guests
2011	''Penn & Teller: Fool Us''	Themselves	7 Episodes (ongoing), ITV1 (UK)
2011	''Penn & Teller: Tell a Lie''	Themselves	Starts Fall of 2011

Books

''Penn & Teller's How to Play in Traffic'' (1997, ISBN 1-57297-293-9)

''Penn & Teller's How to Play with Your Food'' (1992, ISBN 0-679-74311-1)

''Penn & Teller's Cruel Tricks for Dear Friends'' (1989, ISBN 0-394-75351-8)

''Sock '' 2004, ISBN 0-312-32805-2 (Penn Jillette sole author)

''How to Cheat Your Friends at Poker: The Wisdom of Dickie Richard'' 2006, ISBN 0-312-34905-X (Penn Jillette and Mickey D. Lynn)

''When I'm Dead All This Will Be Yours: Joe Teller—A Portrait By His Kid'' 2000, ISBN 0-922-23322-5 (Teller sole author)

Other Media

Music

''The horse you rode in on by Pigface'' (Penn Jillette only)

''Penn & Teller Present: Music To Look At Boxes By'' (With Mike "Jonesy" Jones)

''Never Mind the Sex Pistols, by Bongos Bass & Bob'' (Penn Jillette with Dean J Seal and Bob "Running" Elk)

''Tattoo of Blood by the Captain Howdy'' (Penn Jillette with Mark Kramer)

''Money Feeds My Music Machine, by the Captain Howdy'' (Penn Jillette with Mark Kramer)

''It's Tricky video, by RunDmc" Penn and Teller shown throughout the video and at the end appear to take over the persona of RunDMC

Jillette also toured with the Residents during the Mole Show, and hosted Ralph Records' 10th Anniversary Radio Special (1982). There is some mild controversy and confusion surrounding this. While the premise of 10th Anniversary Radio Special revolved around Jillette having never heard of the label or any of the bands on it (the Residents included), he was credited as a collaborator on the 1981 album Mark of the Mole, and he can be heard giving news bulletins in the first track. This has led some to speculate that Jillette may have been a Resident at one point.

Penn and Teller also appear in the video of Katy Perry's single, ''Waking up in Vegas'' in which they are kicked out of their hotel room by Perry and her boyfriend. They later kick Perry out again.

Theater

In 2008 Teller co-directed a production of ''Macbeth'' in Red Bank, New Jersey and Washington, DC.

Video games

''Penn & Teller's Smoke and Mirrors'' 1995 - Absolute Entertainment for Sega CD & 3DO, Unreleased.

''Sabrina, the Teenage Witch: Spellbound'' 1998 - Simon & Schuster for PC - Voices for Drell & Skippy

References

External links

Penn's "Hydro-therapeutic stimulator" (aka Jill-jet) patent

A man, a ball, a hoop, a bench (and an alleged thread)… TELLER!

Category:Living people Category:Magician of the year Award winner Category:Celebrity duos Category:American magicians Category:Comedy duos Category:Duos Category:1955 births

de:Penn & Teller es:Penn y Teller fr:Penn & Teller id:Penn & Teller it:Penn & Teller lt:Penas ir Teleris nl:Penn & Teller pl:Penn & Teller pt:Penn & Teller fi:Penn & Teller sv:Penn & Teller ta:பென் அண்டு டெல்லர்

Stanley Bernard Greenberg (born May 10, 1945) is a leading Democratic pollster and political strategist who has advised the campaigns of Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and John Kerry, as well as hundreds of other candidates and organizations in the United States and around the world, including the former Bundeskanzler (Chancellor of Germany) Gerhard Schröder and the former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Michael Häupl and the Austrian SPÖ.

A political scientist who received his Bachelor's Degree from Miami University and his Ph.D. from Harvard, Greenberg spent a decade teaching at Yale University before becoming a political consultant. His 1985 study of Reagan Democrats in Macomb County, Michigan became a classic of progressive political strategy, and the basis for his continuing argument that Democrats must actively work to present themselves as populists advocating the expansion of opportunity for the middle class. As the pollster for Clinton in 1992, Greenberg was a major figure in the famed campaign "war room" (and hence the documentary film of the same name).

He is the CEO of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, a polling and consulting firm, and co-founder (with James Carville and Bob Shrum) of Democracy Corps, a non-profit organization which produces left-leaning political strategy. He is married to Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro, who currently represents Connecticut's 3rd congressional district.

During his work for the Austrian SPÖ Greenberg was heavily criticized and derided by FPÖ leader Jörg Haider.

Greenberg's current and former corporate clients include British Petroleum, British Airways, Monsanto Company and General Motors.

In May 2010 Greenberg was linked to a controversy involving White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. While Greenberg was consulting for BP, he provided free rent to Emanuel. Greenberg's efforts "rebranded" BP as a "green company", which critics deemed "greenwashing"

Books

''Politics and Poverty: Modernization and Response in Five Poor Neighborhoods'' (1974)

''Race and State in Capitalist Development: South Africa in Comparative Perspective'' (1980).

''Legitimating the Illegitimate: State, Markets, and Resistance in South Africa'' (1987)

''Middle Class Dreams: The Politics and Power of the New American Majority'' (1995)

''The Two Americas: Our Current Political Deadlock and How to Break It'' (2004) ISBN 0-312-31838-3

''Dispatches From The War Room: In The Trenches With Five Extraordinary Leaders'' (2009) ISBN 0-312-35152-6

References

External links

Bio page at GQR

Democracy Corps

Category:Spouses of members of the United States House of Representatives Category:American political writers Category:Miami University alumni Category:Harvard University alumni Category:American businesspeople Category:1945 births Category:Living people Category:BP people Category:Yale University faculty

de:Stan Greenberg he:סטנלי גרינברג sh:Stan Greenberg

Coordinates	40°26′30″N80°00′00″N
name	Rizwan Khan
birth date
birth place	Aden, South Yemen
education	University of Wales Medical Physiology (B.Sc.) University of Portsmouth Radio Journalism (B.A.)
occupation	Reporter and Anchor at Al Jazeera
years active
website	}}

Rizwan "Riz" Khan (born April 1962) is a British television news reporter and interviewer who until April 2011 hosted his own eponymous television show on Al Jazeera English. He first rose to prominence while working for the BBC and CNN.

Life and career

Khan was born in Aden, South Yemen, to a Punjabi father and Gujarati mother. His father's roots hail from Pakistan-administered Kashmir while his mother's roots go back to Kutch, Gujarat. He considers himself as a British Pakistani. Khan moved with his family to London, at the age of four. He attended both Springwell Junior and Hounslow Manor Comprehensive Schools and joined the Air Training Corps, and graduated with a Bachelor of Science with Honours in Medical Physiology from the University of Wales, and then completed a postgraduate course in Radio Journalism at the University of Portsmouth.

In 1987 he was selected for the BBC News Trainee scheme - a two-year BBC training system, usually taking only 6 people per course. Khan progressed to jobs as a BBC reporter, producer, and writer, working in both television and radio, and would later become one of the founding News Presenters on BBC World Service Television News. He hosted the news bulletin that launched BBC World Service Television News in 1991. In 1993, he moved to CNN International, where he became a senior anchor for the network's global news shows. Events he covered included the 1996 and 1999 coverage of elections in India; the 1997 historic election in Britain; and in April 1998 the unprecedented live coverage from the Muslim pilgrimage, the Hajj.

In 1996 he launched his interactive interview show ''CNN: Q&A; with Riz Khan'', and he has conducted interviews with guests including former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, former US Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, the Dalai Lama and Nelson Mandela, and genomic scientist J. Craig Venter. Khan also secured the world exclusive with Pakistan's General Pervez Musharraf following his coup in October 1999. Khan also hosted ''Q&A-Asia; with Riz Khan''. These interactive shows put world newsmakers and celebrities up for viewer questions live by phone, e-mail, video-mail and fax, along with questions and comments taken from the real-time chatroom that opens half-an-hour before each show.

Khan hosted his show, ''Riz Khan'', on Al Jazeera English, interviewing analysts and policy makers and allows viewers to interact with them via phone, email, SMS messages or fax. The show came to an end in April 2011.

Khan speaks Urdu and Hindi and also understands other South Asian languages such as Punjabi and Kutchi. He has studied French, and can understand some other European languages, including Swedish.

In 2005 he authored his first book, ''Al-Waleed: Businessman Billionaire Prince'', published by Harper Collins.

In 2011 he authored a preface for the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) annual report "Attacks on the Press 2010", which examined working conditions for journalists in more than 100 countries.

References

"Why I'm Joining Al Jazeera", op-ed by Riz Khan, ''The Wall Street Journal'', 13 June 2005, p. A1

"Q&A; CNN Anchor: Riz Khan". ''India Today''. February 19, 2001.

External links

Riz Khan's official website

Profile at Al Jazeera English

MySpace Profile

Interview with Baron Dave Romm of KFAI-FM at the Republican National Convention Sept. 2, 2008 and picture

Category:1962 births Category:Al Jazeera people Category:Alumni of Cardiff University Category:Alumni of the University of Portsmouth Category:British Muslims Category:British people of Indian descent Category:English people of Pakistani descent Category:British journalists Category:British television presenters Category:Living people Category:Punjabi people Category:Gujarati people Category:People from Aden

ar:ريز خان he:ריז ח'אן sw:Riz Khan no:Riz Khan