Alec Gallup, former head of poll, dies

PRINCETON, N.J., June 30 (UPI) -- Alec Gallup, former co-chairman of the U.S. polling organization founded by his father, has died at the age of 81, The Washington Post reported.

Gallup died of heart disease June 22 at his home in Princeton, N.J., the Post said.

After graduating from the University of Iowa with a journalism degree and studying journalism, communications and marketing at Stanford and New York University, Gallup joined the Gallup Organization in 1959. His father, George, a pioneer in random sampling, had founded the Gallup Poll in 1935.

Gallup and his brother, George Jr., assisted their father until his death in 1984 and he served as co-chairmen from 1986 to 1996, after Selection Research bought Gallup.

"He could smell out a bad question or an unreasonable interpretation of data as well as anyone I've ever known," said Andrew Kohut, a former Gallup president who now heads the Pew Research Center.

Gallup helped design the first "Human Needs and Satisfaction" survey in 1976, a pioneering global effort.