HISTORY OF GQR
GQR is a woman-owned business that has provided precise, penetrating opinion research and sophisticated, data-driven strategies for candidates, parties, government leaders, corporations, and advocacy groups across the United States and around the world for more than four decades. From Seattle to Chicago to Dallas to Miami, and across over 90 countries on six continents, we provide the polling, focus groups, communications plans, digital strategies, and data analytics our clients need to thrive, grow, compete, and win.
GQR has been at the center of many of the hardest and most important progressive victories in modern history. The election of Bill Clinton in 1992. Nelson Mandela’s electoral victory in 1994. The Nobel-prize winning International Campaign to Ban Landmines. The election and re-election of Rep. Gabby Giffords in Arizona – and the establishment of her influential gun safety organization after she was shot in 2011. Providing the polling and strategic advice that helped to flip 9 of the 40 seats that changed control of the House of Representatives in 2018 – more than any other firm. Over the past 16 years, our firm won 21 of 22 Senate races when we served as the candidate’s pollster.
Our partners are among the leading names in the profession. A US “Pollster of the Year.” A former adviser to the President of the United States. Ph.Ds. who literally helped write the book on public opinion research. Consultants whose work has been portrayed in award-winning documentaries and Hollywood movies. Top innovators on Big Data and Digital. Trusted advisers to scores of presidents, prime ministers, governors, members of Congress, legislators, mayors, CEOs, and NGO leaders.
The firm was founded in 1980 by Stanley Greenberg – working out of his basement – a former Yale political scientist whose 1985 study of Reagan Democrats in Macomb County, Michigan became a classic of political strategy. That analysis provided the basis for the reform of the Democratic Party in the 1980s and the election of President Bill Clinton in 1992, with Greenberg serving as Clinton’s pollster and strategist. Greenberg and GQR went on to be polling adviser for world leaders including Mandela, Tony Blair, and Ehud Barak. Greenberg has now passed on ownership of the firm to current partners Anna Greenberg (his daughter), Elizabeth Sena, Lindsey Reynolds, and Al Quinlan, and his pioneering research techniques, his insistence on methodological rigor, and his commitment to progressive change continue to define the DNA of the firm’s work.