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Founded by George Gallup in 1958.1
20th century
George Gallup (1901–1984) founded the American Institute of Public Opinion, the precursor of the Gallup Organization, in Princeton, New Jersey, in 1935. Gallup attempted to make his company's polls fair by sampling demographics representative of each state's voters. Gallup also refused to conduct surveys commissioned by organizations such as the Republican and Democratic parties, a position the company has continued to hold.
In 1935, George Gallup released his first political opinion poll. In March 1936, Time magazine wrote that Gallup polling data was "probably as accurate a sample of public sentiment as is available," which included U.S. presidential approval ratings. In 1936, Gallup successfully predicted that Franklin Roosevelt would defeat Alfred Landon for the U.S. presidency in direct contradiction to the popular The Literary Digest; this event popularized the company and made it a leader in American polling. In 1938, Gallup began conducting market research for advertising companies and the film industry.
By 1948, Gallup's company established polling organizations in a dozen other countries, and Gallup's polls were syndicated in newspapers in the U.S. and abroad. The modern Gallup Organization was formed in 1958, when George Gallup merged all of his polling operations into one organization.
George Gallup died in 1984. Four years later, his family sold the firm for an undisclosed price to Selection Research, Incorporated (SRI), a research firm in Lincoln, Nebraska. The family's involvement with the business continued; sons George Gallup Jr. and Alec Gallup kept their positions as co-chairmen and directors. George Gallup Jr. (1930–2011) established the nonprofit George H. Gallup Foundation as part of the acquisition agreement. SRI, founded in 1969 by the psychologist Don Clifton and not to be confused with the more widely known Stanford Research Institute (also abbreviated SRI), focused on market research and personnel selection; it pioneered the use of talent-based structured psychological interviews.
Following its sale to SRI, Gallup repositioned itself as a research and management consulting company that works with businesses to identify and address issues with employees and their customers. Gallup continues to conduct and report on public polls.
In the 1990s, Gallup developed a set of 12 questions it called Q12 to help businesses gauge employee engagement, it entered partnerships to conduct polls for USA Today and CNN, and launched its Clifton StrengthsFinder online assessment tool.
In 1999, Gallup analysts wrote First, Break All the Rules, a bestselling book on management.
21st century
In 2002, Fortune Small Business wrote that the success of First, Break All the Rules bolstered Gallup's consulting business.
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In July 2013, the U.S. Department of Justice and Gallup reached a $10.5 million settlement based upon allegations that the company violated the False Claims Act and the Procurement Integrity Act. The complaint alleged that Gallup overstated its labor hours in proposals to the U.S. Mint and State Department for contracts and task orders to be awarded without competition. The Department of Justice alleged that the agencies awarded contracts and task orders at falsely inflated prices. The settlement also resolved allegations that Gallup engaged in improper employment negotiations with a then-Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) official, Timothy Cannon, for work and funding. Michael Lindley, a former Gallup employee, originally made the allegations against Gallup under the False Claims Act. Lindley received nearly $2 million of the settlement. Under the settlement, there was no prosecution and no determination of liability.
In October 2015, Gallup decided to discontinue presidential election polling, also known as horse race polling, that measured which candidates were ahead, leading into the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Gallup officials said polling could still be accurate during the election, but the company decided to reallocate resources. Frank Newport, then Gallup's editor-in-chief, told The Washington Post that Gallup would instead conduct polls on "where the public stands on the issues of the day, how they are reacting to the proposals put forth by the candidates, what it is they want the candidates to do, and what messages or images of the candidates are seeping into the public's consciousness".
In February 2026, Gallup announced they would no longer measure presidential approval ratings or track the favorability of public figures. A spokesperson for the company said that approval ratings "are now widely produced, aggregated and interpreted, and no longer represent an area where Gallup can make its most distinctive contribution."
From Wikipedia’s article on Gallup, Inc., shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3