Harris Founder Returns to Polling Fray

Eighty-nine-year-old Louis Harris has returned to the company that bears his name after an absence of nearly 20 years, to develop an innovative series of polls reflecting his views on changes in America's current political environment.

Harris, who became famous as John F. Kennedy's pollster in the 1960 campaign, has signed up to help Harris Interactive develop three 'Pulse of Politics' polls, designed to examine opinion about the political climate in the US.

In his remarks on the initial poll, Harris puts forward his view that the political reporting establishment has failed to ask the right questions: in his view, 'political coverage has been taken over by 'small-ball' reporting and polling that almost every day seizes on President Obama's goof-of-the-day to demonstrate his latest alleged mistake.' Harris says the pollsters are too much steered by the pundits' agenda, and that this has created a 'super structure' of political commentary that leaves unmentioned and unexplored some basic facts about the body politic: a state of affairs which he says has 'awakened this old political codger' to become involved in political polling once more.

In the first poll, he draws on results from the latest Harris Poll to examine whether Obama has the ability to be re-elected or not. In a two-way race between Obama and Republican Mitt Romney, results showed that the President wins by 46% to 39%. In an alternative run-off against former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, the result is a landslide: President Obama wins by 52% to 35%, or by 17 points - which Harris describes as no contest at all.

In addition, a simple question was asked about a three-way choice between Obama, Romney, and Palin, which showed Obama receiving 45% of the vote, Mitt Romney 24%, and Sarah Palin, 18%.

Harris' second poll looks at how members of the conservative 'Tea Party' movement - associated with Palin - view the president as a person, with many airing their hostility towards the notion of a black person serving as president of the US.

Commenting on Harris' return to the fold, President & CEO Kimberly Till said: 'Lou is one of the founding fathers of modern polling, and the insights he draws from this special Harris Poll are razor sharp. It is the first Harris Poll that Lou has crafted in almost twenty years and, to say the least, we are thrilled to have re-engaged him.'

Web site: www.harrisinteractive.com .

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.

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