art grew up in California, where his father was an English professor at the University of California at Berkeley. At Colby he majored in history. When he graduated in 1964, there were two pollsters of any stature in the U.S.--George Gallup and Louis Harris. Hart went to work for Harris right out of college, starting in the coding department at $2 per hour. He soon moved up to the research office and studied the 1966 elections for the CBS News polling conducted by Harris. The tumultuous social and political events of that time--including the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War--prompted Hart to re-evaluate his direction. Late one January night in 1968 he was working on a report for Oil & Gas Journal when, he said, "I looked out from the top floor of the old Henry Luce suite at the Time-Life Building in New York and I said, `This isn't what I want to do.'" He explained his restlessness to Harris and left, with the boss's blessing, to do campaign work for a candidate in the Democratic Senate primary in Ohio. "It wasn't about Oil & Gas Journal," Hart said. "It was about issues that move our society--issues that count."
In 1971 Hart started his own firm in Washington. "It was a totally different business then," he said. "We did surveys door to door. We'd send surveys via the U.S. Postal Service." People would have seven to 10 days to return the forms, and the firm would take that much time again to code, tabulate and analyze the data. It took three weeks to produce results. Today it takes as little as eight hours, he says. If a major event happens at 3 p.m., Hart's staff can have a survey approved, calls made, interviewing completed and preliminary results ready for the 11 p.m. news. "That's how much this business has changed in twenty-five years," he said.
Now, too, there are hundreds of polling organizations. "You can't pick up a newspaper today without getting reports on at least five polls," Hart said. Hart Research is one of the few companies that does everything in-house.
While Hart serves a range of corporate, non-profit and political clients, it was work for the Democratic Party and Democratic candidates that brought him esteem. He was director of research for the Democratic National Committee in 1969, before he started his firm, and was head of research for numerous campaigns including Walter Mondale's presidential bid in 1984.
"Everybody wants to be the pollster for a presidential campaign. It's a huge job and it's highly competitive," said Corrado, who has worked with Hart and continues to use Hart's data in his research. "I remember doing the eighty-four Mondale campaign when Peter was the Mondale pollster. He was instrumental. He was at the table every morning with the campaign manager and the campaign chair, sorting the information and actually shaping the campaign. He was always the voice of reason, even when three hundred thousand people a day were deciding they liked Gary Hart better than Walter Mondale."
"Clearly he's a Democratic pollster, but he's so good at what he does that he transcended that party affiliation," Corrado said. "Experience, good measured judgment, prudence in the classical sense, what's the kernel of truth here--that's what Peter provides."
Corrado points to Hart's history with the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. "That [association] more than anything is an indication of the respect he has."