Wirthlin, Richard

American pollster.

Biographical/Historical Note

Richard Bitner Wirthlin was born in Salt Lake City on March 15, 1931, the son of Joseph L. and Madeline Bitner Wirthlin. He earned his bachelor's and master's degrees at the University of Utah and his Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley. Wirthlin noted that he became interested in economics and politics while doing Mormon missionary work in Switzerland and Austria in 1951.

An economist turned political consultant and pollster, Wirthlin began conducting survey research in 1964. Many of his early clients were political candidates in Utah and Arizona, where he taught Economics at BYU and Arizona State University.

Wirthlin's company, originally based in Los Angeles and successively named Decision Making Information, the Wirthlin Group and Wirthlin Worldwide, also did polling for Margaret Thatcher, Barry Goldwater, among other political clients. The company was sold to Harris Interactive in 2004, with Wirthlin serving on its board until retiring in 2007. Wirthlin's companies showed how to integrate different kinds of data - polling, census, political - to measure the electorate's opinions and moods.

Wirthlin first met California Governor Ronald Reagan in 1968, and conducted his first survey for Reagan in that year. He did a number of additional research projects between 1968 and 1976 for Governor Reagan. When Reagan decided to run for the Republican presidential nomination in 1980, he turned to Wirthlin and his company. When Reagan won the White House, Wirthlin moved to Washington, D.C., and continued to provide regular survey research and counsel on strategy and communications through the first term, for the re-election campaign in 1984, and through the second term until Reagan left office in January 1989. It was the most comprehensive program of public opinion research ever undertaken by a president of the United States.

Source:

"Richard Wirthlin, Pollster Who Advised Reagan, Dies at 80," by Adam Clymer, New York Times, March 17, 2011. Accessed: November 11, 2011.

"Background on Wirthlin-Reagan Books," Hoover Institution Archives correspondence with Bryce Bassett, 2002