Louis Harris

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Louis Harris
Louis Harris

Louis Harris
Dean of American Public Opinion polling
Born January 6, 1921 (1921-01-06) (age 87)
New Haven, Connecticut
Nationality United States
Political party Ind
Relations Parents: Harry Harris &

Frances Smith

Married: Florence Yard

Son: Peter Harris

Wife: Barbara Harris

Grandson : Zachary Louis Harris
Residence New York City & Key West
Occupation Columnist/Author

Louis Harris (born 6 January 1921) was born and raised in New Haven, Connecticut. His father Harry was a real-estate developer. He attended New Haven High School and is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1942). In 1943 he married Florence Yard of Chicago and resided in New York City and Key West. The Dean of American Public Opinion polling dynamically pioneered one of the best-known polling organizations of its time, Harris and Associates, Inc. (1956). Then director of the Time Magazine-Harris Poll developed from 1969 to 1972.

Louis Harris is best known for his surveys on public affairs, which are widely syndicated in newspapers across the United States. Over seventeen years since the firm was founded, thousands of systematic, statistical and analytical surveys have been conducted. Also including a spectrum of marketing, governmental, financial, industrial research and numbers of major social and psychological studies.

Harris and Associates entered an entirely new dimension late in 1969 by emerging with the investment firm of Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette. The Harris firm in 1970 developed significant new financial research services to the banking industry in retail surveys, trust studies, and community affairs responsibilities. Mr. Harris has been in the field of public opinion and marketing research since 1947, when he joined the Elmo Roper firm as Mr. Roper's assistant and later partner. In 1956 he initiated up his own firm, polling for political candidates, most notably for the late President John F. Kennedy. Harris dualistically engineered and conducted polling while serving on the Kennedy strategy committee during the 1960 campaign. During this same period, the firm served as consultant and polling arm in 214 elections in local, state, and national campaigns in all 50 states. Forty-five sitting U.S. senators and 25 governors integrated Harris research during this period of independent political polling. A columnist described Mr. Harris as "not a man who aggressively throws his weight around; but his statistics and his skillful delineation of their meaning give him the voice of authority that would have astounded the backroom Bosses of a generation ago."

Early in 1963, Mr. Harris diverted from political polling to write a syndicated column with the Washington Post as his home newspaper. He also conducted surveys for Newsweek magazine, including those on what blacks and whites were thinking which are viewed as landmarks in the field of race relations. Since 1969, Mr. Harris has been syndicated through the Chicago Tribune-New York News Syndicate. The Harris techniques have been used in election coverage by CBS since 1962. Political writer Theodore H. White has described the Harris method as "a most technically sensitive analysis, which revolutionized Election Day reporting." Harris and Associates with a full-time professional staff in New York, complete with field staff and associates under the direction of area field supervisors. Harris International was based in London and other regions were it conducted and produced results.

The Harris firm has also conducted large numbers of studies in social and public affairs. Among these have been governmental studies for the Veterans Administration, HEW, the Peace Corps, the Navy Department, the Joint Commission on Correctional Manpower and Training, the Job Corps, and the National reading Council. Surveys have also been conducted on the adequacy of the health delivery system for Blue Cross, inner-city, parent attitudes toward their children's education, attitudes of catholics toward their parochial schools (for catholic archdioceses), prejudice and animosity between Jews and blacks in New York City (for the Ford Foundation), and a major study of the attitudes of college students, conducted for the American Council on Education and Chancellor Alexander Heard, President Nixon's adviser on campus unrest after the American incursion into Cambodia.

[edit] Career and service

[edit] Bibliography

  • Is There a Republican Majority? (1954)
  • Political Trends: 1952—1956 (1954)
  • The Negro Revolution in America (1964)
  • Black and White (1967)
  • The Anguish of Change (1973)
  • Inside America (1987)

[edit] The Anguish of Change

The national public opinion analyst Louis Harris paints a graphic picture of the size, shape, and meaning of the change which has overtaken America since 1960. He skillfully combines polling results with insights and perspective on the significance and meaning of the changes which have altered the nation and its people drastically.

Harris goes well beyond the surface of polling or elections and portrays general and specific affects on the previous three commanders in chief in the White House-Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon. He recounts quasi-empiricism and endeavors articulated by America's chief executives. The basic thesis of the Harris book is that America has entered a post-economic era, in which much of the material life is taken for granted.

In turn however, this fading of economic determination in the national process and consensus has sprung loose a whole spate of new crises which beset our people and for which we are largely unprepared. These include the just concluded sad and tragic war in Vietnam, the new aspirations of women, the rise of labor as the defender of the status quo, the challenge of business to advocate change, the eruption of consumerism, the growing revulsion over the quality of life, the radically different styles and tastes of people, and the continuing press of segregation to achieve equality. Harris points up the dramatic fall from grace of the establishment institutions and in the last chapters develops the specifications of leadership necessary for America to survive as 1980 approached and for proceeding years.