Neil Newhouse | |
|---|---|
| Born | Kansas City, Missouri, U.S. |
| Alma mater | Duke University;University of Virginia |
| Occupation | Pollster |
| Known for | founding Public Opinion Strategies |
| Political party | Republican Party |
Neil Newhouse is an American pollster. He is the co-founder of Public Opinion Strategies, a political survey andpolling firm, and was the lead pollster for the unsuccessful presidential campaigns of bothJohn McCain andMitt Romney againstBarack Obama.
Newhouse grew up inShawnee Mission, Kansas.[1] He graduated fromDuke University in 1974[2] and attended graduate school at theUniversity of Virginia.[3]
In 1991 he founded the polling companyPublic Opinion Strategies withBill McInturff and Glen Bolger, one of the biggest polling firms inRepublican politics.[1] He was previously executive vice president at theWirthlin Group.[4]
In 1993, Newhouse, who specializes in health-care analysis, worked on creating theHarry and Louise adverts funded by theHealth Insurance Association of America to attack PresidentBill Clinton'shealth care plan.[4] He was later a senior advisor toBob Dole's campaign in the1996 Republican primaries ahead of Clinton's1996 election, but was fired after Dole lostNew Hampshire toPat Buchanan, though Newhouses's polling had in that instance been accurate.[5]
He was lead pollster forJohn McCain's unsuccessful2008 presidential campaign.[4]
In 2012, he was again the lead pollster for aRepublican Partypresidential nominee, this timeMitt Romney, whosepresidential campaign was, like McCain's, against Barack Obama.[4] His polls predicted that Romney would win the election, which proved not to be the case. Newhouse put those errors down, in part, to faulty demographic models of likely turnout, an over-emphasis on measures of voter enthusiasm, and relying onrandom digit dialing rather than lists of registered voters.[1]
Responding to criticism of the factual accuracy of a series ofattack ads on welfare policy during the campaign,[6] Newhouse commented to reporters that "We're not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers", at a panel organised byNBC News at theRepublican National Convention.[7] The comments drew direct criticism from Obama.[8] In a 2016 interview with theDuke Political Review he said "What I meant by that was that every ad we did in the Romney campaign was fact-checked internally ... what I meant was that I wasn't going to let those independent newspaper guys dictate how we’re going to run the strategy of our campaign".[9] A one-lettertypo of his was the subject of several articles when he spelled 'Reagan', 'Regan' in one slide of aPowerPoint presentation. The error came the week after the Romney campaign's "With Mitt" iPhone app had spelled "America" as "Amercia".[10][11][12]
For the2014 Senate elections, he was an adviser to the Republican campaigns in Colorado, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan and West Virginia.[1]
TheAmerican Association of Political Consultants (AAPC) has named Newhouse their Pollster of the Year three times, together or jointly. In 2003, the award went to Public Opinion Strategies for its work in the2002 elections.[2][13] In 2010, he and Glen Bolger split the award, as the Pollster Team of the Year. Newhouse's win was for his work onScott Brown's successful run for senator in aspecial election in Massachusetts.[4][14] In 2016 he won for his work on the campaign against the legalization ofcannabis in Ohio.[15]
Newhouse has a wife, Mary, and two children, with whom he lives inAlexandria, Virginia.[1][3]