This week's guest: pollster Frank Luntz

Frank Luntz is a Washington-based pollster and Republican consultant.

Currently, he is a consultant to the NBC drama The West Wing.  In the 2000 election cycle, Luntz conducted almost two dozen focus groups for cable news networks. Over the past four years, Frank has conducted sessions for all three networks and two of the three cable news channels. 

Luntz was the pollster of record for the Contract with America, the national Republican campaign effort widely credited with giving the GOP a majority in Congress for the first time in 40 years. 

Luntz has also written, supervised, and conducted more than 500 surveys, focus groups and Instant Response sessions for corporate and public affairs clients in eight countries since forming his own company in 1992.

From 1989 until 1996, he was an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the University of Pennsylvania.  He has also taught at Harvard and the Graduate School of Political Management at George Washington University. 

Luntz has authored, co-authored or contributed chapters to four texts.  His first book, Candidates, Consultants & Campaigns, addressed the American electoral process.  He is the co-author of The People’s Budget, a much-touted spending plan that was published in 1995.  Frank was also the contributing author to the Annenberg publication Media Technology and the Vote and the Hudson Institute’s The Promise of American Life. 

Luntz was named one of the four “Top Research Minds” by Business Week and was the winner of The Washington Post “Crystal Ball” award for be the most accurate pundit in 1992.

Luntz graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with an honors Bachelor of Arts degree in history and political science, and was named a Thouron Fellow.  He received his Doctorate in Politics at the age of 25 from Oxford University.  He spoke for 24 straight hours as part of the Oxford Union Society’s Guinness World Book of Records debate.  In 1993, Luntz was named a Fellow at Harvard University’s Institute of Politics, the second youngest individual ever to receive this honor.