Richard Scammon, director of the Census Bureau during parts of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, was best known as an elections expert. He was born in Minnesota in 1915. He earned a degree in political science from the University of Minnesota in 1935 before receiving a master’s degree in the same subject from the University of Michigan. After doing academic work for a couple of years, Scammon enlisted in the Army during World War II, attaining the rank of captain.

After the war, Scammon served as part of the occupation forces in Germany, becoming chief of the military government’s elections and political parties office. From 1948 until 1955, he worked at the State Department as research division chief for Western Europe.

In 1955, Scammon founded the Elections Research Center, a non-profit organization that he directed for forty years until it closed in 1995. In 1961, President Kennedy appointed him director of the Census Bureau. He served at this position into the Johnson administration, until 1965.

After his time at the Census Bureau, Scammon returned to the study of elections, publishing several books, including his famed collaboration with Ben Wattenberg, The Real Majority. That book, an examination of the American electorate, warned that the Democratic Party was pursuing polices that left it in danger of losing the support of the middle class.

Scammon died in April 2001, in Gaithersburg, Maryland. A White House statement upon his death, called him "a groundbreaking analyst of American politics." After his retirement, Scammon participated in the Census Bureau's oral history program.