Warren Wright from Gallup Organization talked about the Gallup World Poll, which represents about 97 percent of the world’s population. He also explained the origins of the poll, which came about during President Bush’s administration and owe a lot to a remark by former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld:

“Donald Rumsfeld was being interviewed after 9/11, and someone in CNN actually asked him,  ‘Secretary Rumsfeld, what is going on here? Can you tell me what Muslims are thinking? Or what do you think?’ And [the] secretary said, ‘How should I know? It’s not like you can do a Gallup poll of the Muslim world.’ So our CEO actually called up our Princeton office and said ‘Can we do that?’ And lo and behold, we started what is now the largest [polling] effort in the world.”

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