Gallup history

Not long after the first Gallup Poll appeared, Gallup brashly announced that the Digest would be wrong in the 1936 election, followed that up with a prediction that the Digest, by its methods, was bound to pick Landon by 56%.

The Audience Research Institute, which Gallup founded in 1937, studied public reaction to movie titles, casts, and stories.

In 1938, Gallup began conducting market research for advertising companies and the film industry.

The modern Gallup Organization formed in 1958, when George Gallup grouped all of his polling operations into one organization.

Although in 1966 his son, George Gallup, Jr., became president of the Gallup Organization, the elder Gallup continued to serve as chairman of the board and was actively engaged in its day-to-day operations.

SRI, founded in 1969 by the psychologist Don Clifton, focused on market research and personnel selection; it pioneered the use of talent-based structured psychological interviews.

Clifton had been conducting and selling surveys since he started S.R.I. in 1975 in Lincoln, Neb. with $5,000.

With the loss of its founder in 1984, the Gallup Organization struggled.

In 1988 Gallup entered a new era when it was acquired by Selection Research, Inc. (SRI), a private research institution based in Lincoln, Nebraska.

Gallup's data processing and interviewing operations were moved to Lincoln, but the company's headquarters remained in Princeton, considered the 'epicenter of the polling world,' according to a 1997 article in Business News New Jersey.

The 1999 book, ''First, Break All the Rules,'' which gave advice on motivating employees and increasing profits, was written by two Gallup consultants, Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman, who marketed the book by stressing that it was based on 80,000 Gallup interviews conducted over 25 years.

The books helped fuel significant growth for Gallup's consulting business, which had revenue of $50 million in 2001, compared with $2 million three years earlier.

In 2002, sales of consumer business books fell 2.1 percent, to $833.9 million, according to Simba Information, a subsidiary of Primedia that conducts market research on the media industry.

In 2003 Gallup University opened its doors in Omaha, Nebraska.

In 2004 Gallup Press was established to serve as the new publishing arm of the organization, producing numerous books and the monthly Gallup Management Journal.

In 2012, Gallup incorrectly predicted that Mitt Romney would win the 2012 United States presidential election.

In July 2013, the United States 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.