Printable Biography of Gary Langer

The first and only pollster to have been awarded a news Emmy, Langer has produced influential and groundbreaking surveys on politics, presidential elections, consumer confidence, health care, war and terrorism, education and more-including the first media-sponsored national public opinion polls in Iraq and Afghanistan. The late ABC News anchor Peter Jennings called him "our great pollster." Ted Koppel, introducing Langer in a 2004 Nightline broadcast, said, "When Gary Langer talks, the White House listens." Mark Zandi, chief economist of economy.com, calls Langer's weekly consumer confidence index one of his "five favorite economic indicators;" its readership runs from the halls of the Fed to the towers of Wall Street.        

A self-described "newsman who does polls, not a pollster who does news," Langer has been covering the beat of public opinion for 20 years, first as an award-winning reporter with The Associated Press (where he also covered national politics, plane crashes, train wrecks and more three-alarm fires than he cares to count), then since 1990 at ABC. He conducts, analyzes and reports on ABC News polls, either singly or with partners including The Washington Post, TIME magazine, the BBC and others; advises the news division on public opinion more broadly; and vets and interprets polling data produced by other organizations to ensure its suitability for ABC's air.        

Langer has appeared on all the major ABC News broadcasts and on many other television and radio programs locally, nationally and internationally. Appearances include The Charlie Rose Show, the BBC, Fuji TV, NPR's Morning Edition and Weekend Edition, PRI's To the Point and uncounted other radio and television live shots. A frequent writer and speaker on public opinion, he's been published in the op-ed pages of The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, the Christian Science Monitor, Nihon Kezai Shimbun and others.   Langer earned a 2004 Emmy nomination, the first for a news pollster, for the ABC News series "Critical Condition: Healthcare in America," then won a 2005 Emmy - another first - for "Iraq: Where Things Stand." He shared in the ABC-wide 2001-2002 DuPont award for ABC's coverage of the 9/11 attacks.      

Langer is president-elect of the New York chapter of the American Association for Public Opinion Research, a trustee of the National Council on Public Polls and a member of the board of directors of StreetWise Partners, a charitable, volunteer-based job-training organization for disadvantaged New Yorkers. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of New Hampshire, he lives in New York with his wife and two daughters.