Elmo Burns Roper, Jr. was a pollster known for his pioneering work in market research

Market research

Market research is any organized effort to gather information about markets or customers. It is a very important component of business strategy...

 and opinion poll

Opinion poll

An opinion poll, sometimes simply referred to as a poll is a survey of public opinion from a particular sample. Opinion polls are usually designed to represent the opinions of a population by conducting a series of questions and then extrapolating generalities in ratio or within confidence...

ing. In 1934, he cofounded Cherington, Wood, and Roper, a marketing research firm. When that partnership fell apart, he founded his own research company, Elmo Roper, Inc. He was hired by Henry Luce

Henry Luce

Henry Robinson Luce was an influential American publisher. He launched and closely supervised a stable of magazines that transformed journalism and the reading habits of upscale Americans...

 in 1935 to run surveys for Fortune

Fortune (magazine)

Fortune is a global business magazine published by Time Inc. Founded by Henry Luce in 1930, the publishing business, consisting of Time, Life, Fortune, and Sports Illustrated, grew to become Time Warner. In turn, AOL grew as it acquired Time Warner in 2000 when Time Warner was the world's largest...

, continuing these surveys for 15 years. His prediction of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's electoral victory over Alf Landon

Alf Landon

Alfred Mossman "Alf" Landon was an American Republican politician, who served as the 26th Governor of Kansas from 1933–1937. He was best known for being the Republican Party's nominee for President of the United States, defeated in a landslide by Franklin D...

 in 1936 was correct to within 0.9%; his 1940 prediction of Roosevelt's victory was correct to within 0.5%, further solidifying the reputation of Roper's techniques. In 1940, Roosevelt hired Roper to assess public opinion of Lend-Lease

Lend-Lease

Lend-Lease was the program under which the United States of America supplied the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, China, Free France, and other Allied nations with materiel between 1941 and 1945. It was signed into law on March 11, 1941, a year and a half after the outbreak of war in Europe in...

 prior to its implementation. In 1942 he was hired by William Joseph Donovan

William Joseph Donovan

William Joseph Donovan was a United States soldier, lawyer and intelligence officer, best remembered as the wartime head of the Office of Strategic Services...

 to be the deputy director of the Office of Strategic Services

Office of Strategic Services

The Office of Strategic Services was a United States intelligence agency formed during World War II. It was the wartime intelligence agency, and it was a predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency...

; Roper subsequently worked with the Office of War Information. After leaving the OWI he founded the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research

Roper Center for Public Opinion Research

The Roper Center for Public Opinion Research at the University of Connecticut is an international archive of social science data, specializing in data from opinion surveys. The data held by the Roper Center ranges from the 1930s, when survey research was in its infancy, to the present...

 at the University of Connecticut

University of Connecticut

The admission rate to the University of Connecticut is about 50% and has been steadily decreasing, with about 28,000 prospective students applying for admission to the freshman class in recent years. Approximately 40,000 prospective students tour the main campus in Storrs annually...

 in 1947.

Roper Opinion Research Company (the "Roper Poll") was later renamed Roper Starch Worldwide Company and eventually acquired by NOP World and then GfK

GfK

The GfK Group, established in 1934 as Gesellschaft für Konsumforschung is Germany's largest market research institute, and the fourth largest market research organisation in the world, after Nielsen Company, Kantar Group, and IMS Health...

in 2005.