Should Americans Believe Gallup Polling Data?

A new look inside Gallup’s massive US Mint fraud
by Grant Smith
Antiwar.com
Dec. 17, 2018

The Gallup Organization was criminally charged in 2012 under the False Claims and Procurement Integrity Acts. The False Claims Act is the primary tool the U.S. government uses, leveraging insider whistle-blowers, to combat contracting fraud against the government. An uncontested 57-page complaint (PDF) reveals that Gallup intentionally delivered deceptive data to the US Mint, the US Department of State, and DHS (FEMA) to maximize profits on a series of no-bid contracts. Among other acts alleged in the complaint were keeping two sets of books and making job offers to federal employees in positions to renew Gallup's lucrative government contracts.

Gallup's history and a review of Gallup's actual US Mint work product -- obtained from the US Treasury under the Freedom of Information Act and made available for the first time online -- reveals Gallup's willingness to secretly engage in fraud to protect lucrative serialized polling contracts. This company culture should raise questions about Gallup polls in categories where there is no similar polling for verification purposes or where Gallup results are inexplicably wildly at odds -- over long time periods -- with other pollsters.

In 1988 the Lincoln, Nebraska-based Selection Research Inc., a family owned private business, acquired Gallup and installed Jim Clifton as CEO where he remains to this day. In 1996 Gallup created a government division to land more contracts focused on tracking studies, polling, in-depth interviewing, qualitative research, and demographic analyses. In March of 2007, Gallup landed an indefinite delivery, indefinite contract with the United States Mint. CEO Clifton by 2008 was pressuring Gallup's government division management to improve revenue and profit under its government contracts. Sameer Abraham, Vice President and Managing Research Director of Gallup's government division hired in 1996, quickly got to work expanding the value of work under the no-bid contract from $3.5 million in 2008 to $7.5 million in 2009. Abraham did it by overbilling the US Mint for more than twice as many work hours as Gallup performed (51,525 hours billed versus 21,627 actually performed according to the criminal complaint).

Gallup simultaneously dangled offers to hire FEMA's Timothy Cannon, who renewed and extended ever larger FEMA contracts for Gallup. On December 19, 2008 CEO Clifton and Cannon had lunch together. At the time, it was consensus among Gallup's management that "We've got to give him an award or something. He is Gallup's MVP outside of Gallup." After winning another round of contracts, on February 5, 2009 Gallup formally extended an offer of employment to Cannon to work in the Gallop government division starting at $175,000 per year. Both Cannon and Gallup subsequently reissued employment offer and acceptance letters to falsely certify that Cannon had no prior agreement for employment outside the federal government before he retired, to skirt rules against such hires.

Gallup's overbilled polling work at the Mint proceeded smoothly. In 2005 Congress passed a law that authorized the production of $1 coins to address what it hoped would be high demand among public transportation, parking meter, vending machine and low denomination transaction currency users, citing earlier, hopeful coin studies containing Gallup data from the US and Canada.

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