Newport, Frank

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Newport, Frank

(Frank M. Newport)

PERSONAL:

Married; children: four. Education: Baylor University, B.A.; University of Michigan, Ph.D.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Gallup Poll, Princeton, NJ. Agent—Sarah Van Allen, Gallup Speakers Bureau, Princeton, NJ. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

University of Missouri—St. Louis, former instructor in sociology; Gallup Poll, Princeton, NJ, editor in chief. On-air host, "The Daily Briefing" Web cast program. Radio host, WHYY, Philadelphia, PA. Member of board of directors, Roper Center for Public Opinion Research.

MEMBER:

American Association of Public Opinion Research (member of the executive council), National Council on Public Polls (vice president).

WRITINGS:

(With Stuart Rothenberg and Eric Licht) Ethnic Voters and National Issues: Coalitions in the 1980s, Free Congress Research and Education Foundation (Washington, DC), 1982.

(With Stuart Rothenberg) The Evangelical Voter: Religion and Politics in America, Free Congress Research and Education Foundation (Washington, DC), 1984.

Polling Matters: Why Leaders Must Listen to the Wisdom of the People, Warner Books (New York, NY), 2004.

(Editor, with Alec M. Gallup) The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion 2004, Rowman & Littlefield (Lanham, MD), 2006.

(Editor, with Alec M. Gallup) The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion 2005, Rowman & Littlefield (Lanham, MD), 2006.

(Editor, with Alec M. Gallup) The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion 2006, Rowman & Littlefield (Lanham, MD), 2008.

Author of blog "Gallup Guru." Contributor to "Where America Stands" book series. Contributor to periodicals, including American Sociological Review, Public Opinion Quarterly, New York Times, and Los Angeles Times.

SIDELIGHTS:

Frank Newport is the editor in chief of the Gallup Poll, one of the nation's leading polling organizations. Following the 2006 congressional elections, Newport was asked by Martin Kasindorf of USA Today how close his organization had come in predicting the winners. Newport replied: "If someone went to bed Monday and then woke up on Wednesday, they would have seen almost exactly the same [numbers]." Newport has written or edited a number of books on public polling issues, including Ethnic Voters and National Issues: Coalitions in the 1980s, The Evangelical Voter: Religion and Politics in America, and Polling Matters: Why Leaders Must Listen to the Wisdom of the People. In The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion 2004, The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion 2005, and The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion 2006, Newport and coeditor Alec M. Gallup present all the Gallup public opinion polls that were conducted during each given year. While the organization is best known for its political polling, they also poll the public on a wide variety of other issues of interest.

In Polling Matters Newport argues that public opinion polls, which are based on interviews with a few thousand people, are effective in determining the opinions of the population as a whole. Because of this, he argues that polls should be used more extensively by politicians to gauge exactly what the public wants and needs. Even while politicians are in office, Newport believes, they should use polls to determine where their constituents stand on public policy issues. "Polling," Newport wrote in his introduction to the book, "is a wonderful application of scientific principles to the challenge of understanding and extracting the insights, emotions, and attitudes of the millions of people aggregated into a common society. There is great wisdom bound up in these collective views. Polling is by far our best, most efficient, and most productive way of extracting this wisdom. Rather than fearing the influence of polls or denigrating their value, we should be spending more time and devoting more energy to a focused effort to use them wisely." "General readers," Greg Shaw wrote in Perspectives in Political Science, "likely will appreciate the behind-the-scenes tour of polling, regardless of whether they accept Newport's call for greater reliance on public opinion polls by politicians." "Newport offers an accessible introduction to the methods of scientific public-opinion polling and makes a strong argument for the value of polls," according to Robert Nardini in the Library Journal.

Speaking to Joe Ruff of the Omaha World-Herald, Newport noted: "In general I think public opinion is the fundamental bedrock of democracy. The public of course gets to express its opinion in the elections, which occur every two, four or six years, and to decide on which representatives to send off to represent us. But there is a great deal of time between elections. Our elected representatives have to make decisions and formulate policies on an almost daily basis. Without scientific polling between elections, these representatives are making decisions based on a wide variety of different criteria, some certainly better than others. Obviously, we know that special interests and powerful groups have a great deal of impact on what our representatives do. Polls help put the people in the mix to keep their elected representatives on task and focused on the people's wishes and desires. Election polls are part of this process. Helping interject the public's opinion into elections keeps the candidates focused on what the voters want them to be doing and discussing."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Campaigns and Elections, September, 2004, Ron Faucheux, review of Polling Matters: Why Leaders Must Listen to the Wisdom of the People, p. 44.

Choice, February, 2008, G.R. Walden, review of The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion 2006, p. 962.

Library Journal, July, 2004, Robert Nardini, review of Polling Matters, p. 104.

Omaha World-Herald (Omaha, NE), January 19, 2008, Joe Ruff, "Polls Are Key Part of Political Process in U.S.," interview.

Perspectives on Political Science, fall, 2004, Greg Shaw, review of Polling Matters, p. 247.

Public Opinion Quarterly, fall, 2006, Robert Y. Shapiro, review of Polling Matters, p. 402.

Publishers Weekly, June 21, 2004, review of Polling Matters, p. 57.

Reference & Research Book News, November, 2004, review of Polling Matters, p. 124; November, 2006, reviews of The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion 2004 and The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion 2005.

USA Today, November 9, 2006, Martin Kasindorf, "Pollsters Say Their Forecasts Were Mostly on Target This Time Around," p. 9A.