s in the areas of politics, advertising, and market research. The use of polls within the context of a political campaign, the Gallup and Harris polls for instance, is the way in which most Americans become familiar with the national issues, trends, and perceptions of the candidates. In fact, one scholar noted that, "However partial, misleading or inconclusive polls may be as indicators of public opinion, they are better than anything else we've got" ("The Business of Politics," 1988, p. 1).
By the 1960s, public opinion polls became one of the major tools used by candidates to check popular feeling on major issues. In the 1970s and 1980s, one of the most significant developments was the entrance of the news media into what was previously a specialized field. Barry Sussman, former director of polling for The Washington Post commented that:
In 1972, no main news organization had a regular poll of its own. The chore of sampling public opinion was left mostly to Gallup and Harris . . . fifteen years later almost every elite media had a poll of its own
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