The Harris Poll

Overview

The Harris Poll is an American market research and public opinion polling organisation that has tracked the sentiment, behaviour and motivations of American adults since 1963. Based in New York and Chicago as part of the Stagwell group, it is one of the longest-running surveys of United States public opinion. Its releases — on politics, corporate reputation, brands, health, technology and social issues — are distributed to news organisations and cited across national media, while its consulting work advises companies and institutions on reputation, brand strategy and communications.

Unlike a purely academic survey centre, The Harris Poll operates commercially. It conducts the recurring public poll that bears its name, undertakes custom research for corporate and public-sector clients, and has developed data platforms that let brands track their standing and campaign performance. That combination of a published news product and a client research business has kept the Harris name continuously in public life through several changes of corporate ownership over six decades.

Louis Harris and the Founding

The organisation's founder, Louis Harris, established his market research firm, Louis Harris & Associates, in 1956. In 1960 he worked for the presidential campaign of John F. Kennedy, becoming the first pollster employed by a presidential candidate in that modern sense, and the experience convinced him of the value of a continuing, independent measure of public opinion. He began The Harris Poll in 1963 for that purpose, and its results informed public debate during periods of change in the Kennedy era and, later, the presidency of Ronald Reagan, whose pollster Richard Wirthlin's firm Wirthlin Worldwide was eventually acquired by Harris.

Harris expanded internationally as well. In 1970 his firm acquired the British operation associated with Humphrey Taylor, who had been a leading strategist and pollster for the Conservative Party and Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom. Louis Harris retired in January 1992, at the age of 70, and formed a second company, LH Associates, while the original firm and its poll continued under corporate ownership. Through every subsequent transaction, the Harris Poll name itself was retained unchanged.

Changes of Ownership

The Harris business passed through a succession of owners that mirrors the consolidation of the research industry. The firm was sold to the investment firm Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette in 1969 and then to the media company Gannett in 1975. In 1996 the Gordon S. Black Corporation acquired it; that company became Harris Black International in 1997 and went public in 1999 under the name Harris Interactive, the identity under which the business operated through the first internet era of online polling.

Harris Interactive was acquired by Nielsen, with the transaction completed in the 2013–2014 period for a reported sum of around $116 million, and Nielsen subsequently sold its European arm to the Toluna group's parent. In January 2017 the Stagwell Group, the investment firm led by former presidential pollster Mark Penn, acquired the Harris brand and related custom research assets from Nielsen and took the business private. Stagwell relaunched the company as Harris Insights & Analytics, keeping The Harris Poll brand, and the organisation today operates as part of Stagwell, with Mark Penn as chairman and John Gerzema among its chief executives.

What The Harris Poll Measures

The recurring Harris Poll surveys American adults on the subjects that dominate public life: politics and elections, the economy and personal finances, health, science and technology, lifestyles, sports and social attitudes. Weekly and periodic releases publish findings with trend comparisons that in some series extend back decades, giving journalists and researchers a long baseline against which to read current sentiment. Because the poll has run continuously since 1963, its archive is one of the standard reference points for how American opinion on recurring questions has moved over time.

The company describes its client work in three broad areas: building corporate reputation, crafting brand strategy and performance tracking, and earning organic media coverage through public relations research. Its studies of corporate reputation and brand equity are among the Harris products most frequently quoted in business coverage, since they rank familiar companies and industries in ways editors and readers readily understand. Custom projects for clients remain private unless the client chooses to publish them, while Harris-branded releases are issued for public citation.

The Harvard CAPS / Harris Poll

The best-known current Harris political product is the monthly Harvard CAPS / Harris Poll, conducted jointly by The Harris Poll and HarrisX with the Center for American Political Studies at Harvard University. The survey interviews roughly two thousand registered voters online in the United States and reports on presidential approval, the direction of the country, party standing, and voter reactions to current events and policy proposals. Its results are released with detailed crosstabs and are widely covered during election cycles.

HarrisX, the technology-driven research company associated with the project, conducts multi-method research in the United States and in more than forty countries for companies, public policy institutions and non-profit organisations. The partnership illustrates the modern Harris model: an established polling brand, a university research centre supplying academic framing, and a technology platform supplying large online samples and rapid turnaround, with the findings distributed as news.

Methods and Data Products

Harris was an early mover in the transition from telephone interviewing to online survey research, a shift associated with its Harris Interactive period, when it maintained large online respondent panels. Modern Harris studies are typically conducted online among nationally representative samples of adults or registered voters, with results weighted to population benchmarks, and releases disclose field dates, sample sizes and the sponsoring partners. The monthly political surveys, for example, publish their sample sizes — commonly a little over two thousand registered voters — alongside the findings.

Alongside survey fieldwork, the company has built software and data platforms through which brand clients can monitor reputation and campaign performance continuously rather than commissioning one study at a time. That product direction reflects the wider industry movement from periodic reports toward dashboards fed by repeated measurement. The Harris Poll's published surveys continue alongside these platforms, supplying the public data series on which its media reputation rests.

Clients and Geographic Reach

The Harris Poll is headquartered in Chicago and New York City, with additional offices reported in Washington, D.C. and Rochester, New York, the latter a legacy of the Harris Interactive era. Its public poll measures the United States, while HarrisX extends research internationally and the wider Stagwell network gives the firm access to marketing and communications clients around the world. Clients span consumer brands, healthcare, financial services, technology, media and public affairs, in both the private and public sectors.

Within Stagwell, Harris sits alongside firms including the strategic communications agency SKDK, the entertainment research firm National Research Group and the digital agency Code and Theory, all of which were among the group's early acquisitions. That positioning means Harris research is frequently commissioned as the evidence base for campaigns its sister agencies design, as well as being sold as a standalone research service.

Role in News Coverage

For news organisations, The Harris Poll functions as a wire-like source of survey news. Its releases arrive with topline findings ready for citation, and because the brand is long established, editors treat Harris results as a familiar benchmark in election, consumer and reputation stories. The Harvard CAPS / Harris Poll in particular is quoted across the political spectrum during campaigns, and its monthly cadence gives newsrooms a recurring data point between the releases of other major pollsters.

The poll's longevity is central to that role. A survey house founded by John F. Kennedy's pollster, carried through the Gannett, Harris Interactive and Nielsen eras and relaunched under Stagwell, offers continuity that newer online pollsters cannot match. When Harris reports that trust, optimism or approval has reached a level not seen in a specified number of years, the claim rests on its own archive of comparable questions.

Significance

The Harris Poll helped define the modern practice of published public opinion research in the United States. Louis Harris demonstrated in 1960 that a pollster could serve a presidential campaign, and from 1963 he demonstrated that a continuing commercial poll could serve the public record as well, measuring opinion between elections on the issues of the day. The organisation's techniques, alumni and question series influenced the wider survey industry, and its corporate-reputation research helped establish reputation measurement as a standard management discipline.

Today, as part of Stagwell's Harris Brand Platform, the poll continues to publish the surveys on politics, brands and social issues for which it is cited. Its combination of a sixty-year trend archive, a university-partnered monthly political survey and a commercial consulting practice makes it one of the most recognisable names in American polling, and a regular source in the news coverage this directory exists to map.