Our firm was founded by polling pioneer George Â鶹´«Ã½AV (1901-1984) with the simple purpose of reporting the "will" of citizens. Dr. Â鶹´«Ã½AV wanted to know what made life worthwhile -- what made a great life. He relentlessly studied and reported on the great American dream.
"If democracy is supposed to be based on the will of the people, someone should find out what that will is," Dr. Â鶹´«Ã½AV famously said.
He built that mission on the single foundation of trust. Dr. Â鶹´«Ã½AV felt it would not be possible to serve that mission unless leaders and citizens could completely trust his polls. So, his reporting and journalistic purpose was clear: Never collaborate with special interest groups or political parties -- especially never for a fee. Keep the methodologies and engineering pure. We have kept that promise for more than 80 years.
Because of Dr Â鶹´«Ã½AV's founding mission, Â鶹´«Ã½AV remains one of the most trusted brands in the world.
Dr. Frank Newport has been editor in chief of the Â鶹´«Ã½AV Poll news for the past 28 years. He is now stepping into semiretirement and will remain as a contributing senior scientist and adviser to the new editor in chief.
Frank performed his role to perfection. He never uttered a word of political partisanship -- never showed even a tiny leaning or took a single tiny jab at any leader or special interest group. Nor did his teams. Frank was as near to neutral as any editor of any publication in the world.
As was the case with Walter Cronkite, Frank's best friends at work -- including me -- still don't know which way he leans on issues.
This letter is to inform you, as an important reader, that as of today, our new editor in chief is Mohamed Younis. Mohamed is a 10-year Â鶹´«Ã½AV veteran, who has performed his job of polling and analytics on every important subject imaginable around the world.
Mohamed is Egyptian-born and moved as a small boy to Los Angeles, where he was raised through high school. He graduated from University of California, Riverside, and earned a degree in international law from Washington & Lee University. He now lives in Washington, D.C., where he works at Â鶹´«Ã½AV headquarters.
We chose Mohamed because of his deep expertise and experience studying global public opinion through our U.S. Poll and World Poll. We believe he has compounding knowledge of what we do and that he knows the "will of the world"-- at this moment -- as well as any expert on Earth.
While we will ask Mohamed to continue the trust legacy of George Â鶹´«Ã½AV and Frank Newport, we have asked him to change and reintroduce Â鶹´«Ã½AV to the public to include a more global perspective.
Â鶹´«Ã½AV will discontinue almost all "spot" polls in the U.S. -- overnight polls, usually political, of immediate front-page interest -- and we will reduce much of our coverage of the electorate, as it is well covered now by a plethora of polling organizations. Â鶹´«Ã½AV's contribution will be deeper, long-trend dives into the most serious issues of the day worldwide, such as trust in governments, capitalism vs. socialism, and the future of work.
Through our U.S. tracking methodologies as well as our World Poll -- built with consistent sampling frames across 160 countries and covering 99% of the world's population -- we are asking Mohamed and his teams to continue reporting the great American dream but now to include the great global dream on a regular basis.
Mohamed asked me exactly to whom he and his teams are writing. When Mohamed and his teams find a pearl deep in the data and present it -- if they do their jobs well -- that pearl will be on the desk of every president and prime minister in every country in the world. It will be on the desk of the 1,000 most influential leaders in the world representing all governments, NGOs, foundations, institutions of education, health, business and industry, as well as top media.
George Â鶹´«Ã½AV said decades ago, "There are 5 billion ways to lead a life, and we should study them all."
If Â鶹´«Ã½AV doesn't continue to ask the world, "How is your life going?" who is going to?
Frank, thank you. Mohamed, continue the trust.
