Every election cycle, dozens of polling organizations spend untold millions on political polls. But the roots of polling don’t lie in political science or among partisan operatives. The first polls and the first “pollsters” were psychologists and sociologists in academia and industry. And they include some of the most important figures in the history of social science.
Like so many other fields, social psychology got a big boost during World War II with government-sponsored studies of problems afflicting American soldiers. Lazarsfeld and Likert joined other emerging stars who came to dominate post-war social science, including Samuel Stouffer, Hadley Cantril, John Dollard, Robert Merton, and many more.
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