[1] While there he was a member of the Iowa Beta chapter of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity, and edited of The Daily Iowan, the campus newspaper.

He moved to New York City in 1932 to join the advertising agency of Young and Rubicam as director of research, serving as vice president there from 1937 to 1947.

He was also a professor of journalism at Columbia University, but relinquished the position shortly after he formed his own polling company, the American Institute of Public Opinion, in 1935.

[3] In 1936, his new organization achieved national recognition by correctly predicting that Franklin Roosevelt would defeat Alf Landon in the U.S. Presidential election, besting a poll based on over two million returned questionnaires conducted by the widely-respected Literary Digest magazine.

[citation needed] Twelve years later, his organization suffered its moment of greatest ignominy by predicting that Thomas Dewey would defeat Harry S. Truman in the 1948 election by between 5% and 15%.