Mervin D. Field, a pioneering opinion researcher whose survey of attitudes and anxieties in the Golden State helped shape California politics and inform the state’s elected leadership for more than half a century, has died. He was 94.
Mr. Field, a longtime resident of Tiburon and Belvedere, died of natural causes Sunday at an assisted-living facility in Mill Valley, said Mark DiCamillo, senior vice president of Field Research and director of the Field Poll.
The California Poll, launched in 1947, was the first of its kind and even decades later, when the Los Angeles Times and the Public Policy Institute of California began publishing their own surveys, Mr. Field’s research maintained considerable influence.
The results, widely broadcast and published throughout the state, could instantly recast a campaign or alter a policy debate in Sacramento. Knowing its impact, political strategists would often try to game the poll by timing a burst of advertising or major announcement to sway public opinion.
A strapping man with oversized glasses, a booming laugh, balding scalp and insatiable love of politics, Mr. Field combined the intellectual rigor of an academician with the Borscht Belt-humor of a frustrated standup comic. For years, he combined his skills by emceeing an annual nightclub gathering of Northern California politicians and political insiders, mixing topical commentary and analysis with a string of groan-inducing one-liners.
He could also laugh at himself. One year, after being mocked by a campaign strategist as a would-be “swami,” Mr. Field showed up at the gala wearing a white turban and a broad smile.
For all his success, Mr. Field wasn’t always right, as critics — most often candidates trailing in his surveys — were apt to point out. His most famous and embarrassing flub came in November 1982, when Mr. Field went on television on election night and declared that Democrat Tom Bradley, the mayor of Los Angeles, would make history by becoming California’s first black governor. Mr. Field had failed to account, however, for voters who cast early ballots, which strategists for Republican George Deukmejian had targeted in a then-novel strategy.
When the results were in, Deukmejian squeaked past Bradley by fewer than 100,000 votes out of nearly 8 million cast. A pre-election canvass of mail-in voters has been a standard practice for California pollsters ever since.
Mervin Field was born March 11, 1921, in New Brunswick, N.J. His parents were Jewish immigrants from Russia. (The D. was an affectation Mr. Field added as a young adult to give his name, he believed, a more WASPish sound.)
His parents struggled to raise their five children, so eventually Mr. Field, their youngest, and an older sister moved in with an aunt and uncle. When the couple relocated to New York City during Mr. Field’s sophomore year in high school, he stayed behind, renting a $5-a-week room outside Princeton. He supported himself by taking various jobs, among them caddying — he met Albert Einstein when the professor strolled past the golf course one day — bagging groceries, parking cars and delivering newspapers.
One day in his junior year, he tagged along with a friend on an errand and met the pollster George Gallup, whose opinion research office was near the Princeton University campus. Mr. Field was taken with the rudimentary tools of polling: questionnaires, punch cards, slide rules, card-counting sorters. Inspired, he conducted the first of countless surveys while still in high school, a sampling of preferences in the race for senior class president.
After graduating, Mr. Field briefly attended Rutgers University and then the University of Missouri, where he studied journalism until his money ran out. He returned to New Jersey, sans degree, and worked for Gallup in various capacities until the start of World War II. Rejected for military service due to poor eyesight, Mr. Field joined the Merchant Marine, serving on a transport ship in the South Pacific and European theaters, where he survived Nazi U-boat attacks as well as collisions at sea. During off hours and home visits, he studied survey research methodology.
Like many service members, Mr. Field was enchanted as he passed through balmy California and relocated to Los Angeles upon leaving the Merchant Marine in November 1945.
The next month Mr. Field launched his one-man research firm, devoted to serving corporate clients. Soon after he started the California Poll, modeled on a political survey done by a friend in Texas. The poll was never a big moneymaker: the point was to boost the commercial portion of Mr. Field’s business by showcasing his research ability.
In 1948, Field moved to the Bay Area and soon became a fixture in San Francisco’s Financial District, lunching most weekdays at one of two white-table-cloth restaurants, often with a politician, journalist or other campaign junkie who shared his hunger for the latest political gossip. For decades, Mr. Field ordered the same dish — grilled petrale sole — consuming, by his account, more than 4,000 servings.
At its height, Field Research employed more than 40 staffers and as many as 100 professional interviewers, and its clients included many of California’s biggest corporations, including Bank of America, Standard Oil, Crown Zellerbach and Pacific Telephone.
Mr. Field stepped away from the day-to-day operation of the commercial business in 1992 but stayed involved in the California Poll, later renamed the Field Poll in his honor, well into his 90s, drafting questionnaires and helping analyze the results.
Mr. Field and his first wife, Virginia, divorced in 1955. His second wife, Marilyn, died in 2005. He is survived by two daughters, Nancy and Melanie; a son, David; and a grandson.
Distributed by Tribune News Service
