ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the spread of public opinion polling in other parts of the world. Public opinion polling is an American creation and, an American institution. American pollsters were first recruited to help develop a polling industry in the other mature and relatively affluent democracies in the world, such as Britain, Canada, Germany, and Australia, to name only a few. Polling spread rapidly in developed democracies because these nations could easily see how beneficial polling had been to various consumers of polls in America. Successful polling cannot be conducted very easily in just any country because certain prerequisites are required. Polling has normally flourished in modern, stable democratic societies because generally these societies have satisfied the basic prerequisites of acceptable opinion research. A unique feature of British polling is that their pollsters, even most of the American pollsters polling in Britain, have relied primarily on quota sampling, even though adequate sampling frames exist that could be used for probability sampling.
