The Opinion Makers

You will never regard political polls the same after reading David W. Moore’s devastating inside account of their severe limitations and misapplications. This book should be required reading for journalists, political junkies, students, scholars, and citizens. —Robert W. McChesney, author of The Political Economy of Media

“In this succinct and damning critique of the pitfalls of public opinion reporting, Moore, former senior editor of the Gallup Poll, argues that today’s polls report the whims rather than the will of the people. … Keen and witty throughout.”—Publishers Weekly

“A powerful argument that polls do not merely misinform us but pose a genuine, if subtle, threat to our democracy.”—Mark Crispin Miller

“The Opinion Makers is the most important book about the making of polls and public opinion that I have read. The account of how news stories drive polls should make us stop and ask whether the close relationship between the newsroom and polling operations is perhaps a bit too close. A must read.”—W. Lance Bennett, director, Center for Communication and Civic Engagement, University of Washington, Seattle