Louis Harris was born in New Haven, Connecticut on January 6, 1921. He received a degree in economics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1942. He joined the Navy and became a junior officer on patrol boats in the North Atlantic. He ran his first poll in 1945 when he was asked by the Navy to determine if sailors in Boston were being treated properly. After a year as a researcher with a veterans' organization, he went to work for Elmo Roper in 1947. He wrote Roper's newspaper columns and radio scripts until 1951, when he became a partner, concentrating on political research. In 1956, he founded Louis Harris and Associates.
The bulk of his company's early work was market research for concerns like Johnson and Johnson, American Airlines, Standard Oil, and the New York Stock Exchange. In 1958, he was hired as a campaign strategist for John F. Kennedy. Harris also worked on campaigns for Mayor Robert F. Wagner of New York, Senator Frank Church of Idaho, and Senators John Sherman Cooper and Thruston B. Morton of Kentucky. By 1963, Harris gave up political advocacy to become a syndicated columnist and a public-opinion analyst for CBS News.
From 1963 to 1968, he wrote syndicated columns for The Washington Post and Newsweek. From 1969 to 1988, he wrote for The Chicago Tribune-New York Daily News Syndicate. From 1969 to 1972, he wrote for Time magazine. He wrote several books on politics, racial issues, and national trends including Is There a Republican Majority?, The Negro Revolution in America, Black and White, Black-Jewish Relations in New York City, The Anguish of Change, and Inside America. He retired in 1992. He died on December 17, 2016 at the age of 95.
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