Archibald Maddock Crossley (December 7, 1896 – May 1, 1985) was an American pollster, statistician, and pioneer in public opinion research.
He attended Princeton University for one year in 1917, dropping out to go to work as a copywriter and researcher for J. H. Cross Company, a small advertising firm in Philadelphia.
[2][3] Like Elmo Roper and George Gallup, Crossley successfully predicted the outcome of the 1936 United States presidential election.
The pollsters used scientific sampling methodologies that proved far more accurate than the Literary Digest's straw poll, which had notoriously predicted Franklin D. Roosevelt's defeat (he won in a landslide).
He also crusaded for a stronger code of professional ethics among pollsters, publicly rebuking the Democratic National Committee in 1967 for leaking a private Crossley poll to the press in an attempt to bolster Lyndon B. Johnson's sinking popularity.