Mike Mokrzycki | Pollster, 52

Mike Mokrzycki, 52, a former journalist and election polling specialist at the Associated Press who later started his own survey research business, died of an apparent heart attack, his wife said.

Mr. Mokrzycki died Friday at the couple's home in West Newbury, Mass., said Jill Gambon, his wife of 21 years.

Mr. Mokrzycki worked for the AP for 24 years. He joined the news cooperative as a reporter in Augusta, Maine, in 1985. Four years later, he transferred to the AP's national editing desk in New York City. In 1993, he was part of a group that won an Associated Press Managing Editors Award for Spot News for the news cooperative's coverage of the first attack on the World Trade Center.

In 1994, Mr. Mokrzycki began coordinating exit poll analyses throughout the United States, training reporters and editors nationwide on how to analyze poll data. He went on to become the founding director of the AP's polling unit. - AP