Elmo Roper Jr

Elmo Roper Jr was born on July 31, 1900  in Hebron, Nebraska. He held a career in the jewelry business for quite some time until he to become a salesman for the Seth Thomas Clock Company. A few years later Roper opened his own firm in marketing research in New York. His success quickly took off in 1935 when Henry R Luce, the publisher of Fortune magazine requested that Ropers firm conduct public opinion surveys. From there he was nationally acknowledged for his conventional scientific use of sampling methods during the 1936 election where his polls predicted the reelection of FDR. In effect of Roper’s success, Literary Digest went out of business.

Roper continued with his governmental posts and polls giving his results to successful papers, columns, articles and broadcasts. At the end of World War 2 he was named Deputy director of the Office of Strategic Services. Roper gained much of his influence during the Truman Years. He had a column in the New York Herald Tribune where he would write “ What People Are Thinking” on issues such as a having a Jewish state in Palestine at the time. 

In 1948 Roper’s succession of successful predictions hit a bump in the road when he falsely predicted the President Truman losing the election. Though his firm was extremely embarrassed, he didn't lose any clients. As Roper stated following his miscalculations it turned out to be helpful because “ practitioners learned more about his limitations of the technique and from past errors, how to avoid future errors.” Following the Truman years, Roper continued on as a pollster, speaking out against the misuse of polls by politicians. He died on April 30, 1971 in Norwalk, Connecticut. 

Works Consulted

Ritchie, Donald A.. American journalists: getting the story. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Bush, Gregory. "Roper, Elmo B., Jr." In Uebelhor, Tracy S. The Truman Years, Presidential Profiles. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2006. American History Online.