Mervin Field

Born in 1921 in Canada, Mervin Field had a chance encounter with pollster Dr. George Gallup in high school that first introduced him to polling. Field soon conducted his first survey to determine opinions about the candidates for his high school’s class president. During the remaining two years of high school, he worked part-time for Gallup. Field had a limited formal education, spending only a few months at Rutgers University night school, the University of Missouri, and the US Merchant Marine Academy. In 1945, he created the Field Research Corporation in San Francisco and two years later created the California Poll, later renamed the Field Poll. While his polls were for the most part able to predict elections within accepted error margins, Field famously predicted that Tom Bradley would become California’s governor, rather than George Deukmejian, who won. This event gave rise to what would become known as the “Bradley Effect,” a theory proposing that some voters who intend to vote for the white candidate would nonetheless tell pollsters that they are undecided or likely to vote for the non-white candidate. However, this error was an aberration, as Field polls have helped the country and public opinion polls enormously—not only with the prediction of election outcomes but also with the tracking of cultural and social attitude changes in the most populous state in the nation. Mervin Field died at the age of 94, releasing his last poll, Field Poll No. 2,508, one month prior to his passing.