A Gallup Poll is an opinion poll conucted by The Gallup Organization and frequently used by the mass media for representing public opinion. The Gallup Poll is named after its inventor, the American statistician, George Gallup. Until the mid-1980s the Gallup Poll conducted its polls using door-to-door sampling methods. Now, however, nearly all samples are chosen using the process of random digit dialing. ("How Polls are Conducted", an excerpt from Where America Stands by Michael Golay, 1997)