Lou Harris crafts first political poll in 20 years

The 89-year-old founder of the Harris Poll will draw up three surveys for the company. The first, which was released last week, looks at how the US would vote in a three-way race between Democrat Barack Obama, Republican Mitt Romney and Tea Party candidate Sarah Palin.

Harris said that current political reporting in the US “has been taken over by ‘small-ball’ reporting and polling” based on President Obama’s “goof-of-the-day”.

He said that this style of polling leaves some of the basic facts about the political landscape “unmentioned and unexplored”. He added: “This sad state of affairs has awakened this old political codger.”

Harris will conduct another two polls for the company, one about the Republican party and the other looking at who the Tea Party voters are.

Kimberly Till, president and CEO at Harris Interactive, said: “Lou is one of the founding fathers of modern polling, who pioneered many of the techniques we now use. 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.”

The photo of Lou is a still taken from a video interview conducted by Pollster.com’s Mark Blumenthal last year. Click here to watch the interview.