During the US presidential elections of 1936, the magazine The Literary Digest conducted an opinion poll using millions of people but still ended up being wrong. Who bested the magazine with his scientific technique using only a small percentage of what the magazine had used?
"and 1988 concluded that non-response bias was the primary source of this error, although their sampling frame was also quite different from the vast majority of voters. George Gallup's American Institute of Public Opinion achieved national recognition by correctly predicting the result of the 1936 election and by also correctly predicting the quite different results of the ""Literary Digest"" poll to within about 1%, using a smaller sample size of 50,000. Gallup's last poll before the election predicted Roosevelt would receive 56% of the popular vote. The official tally gave Roosevelt 61%. This debacle led to a considerable refinement of"
"be generalized, but are only representative of the participants of the poll. One example of an error produced by an open access-poll was one taken by ""The Literary Digest"" to predict the 1936 United States presidential election. Similar polls by the magazine had correctly predicted the outcome of the four earlier presidential elections. The magazine's 1936 poll suggested that Alfred Landon would defeat Franklin D. Roosevelt by an overwhelming margin. In fact, the opposite happened. Later studies suggested that the main reason for the error was that Roosevelt's opponents were more vocal and thus more willing to respond to the"
"misleading results it produced occurred in 1936. In the early days of opinion polling, the American ""Literary Digest"" magazine collected over two million postal surveys and predicted that the Republican candidate in the U.S. presidential election, Alf Landon, would beat the incumbent president, Franklin Roosevelt, by a large margin. The result was the exact opposite. The Literary Digest survey represented a sample collected from readers of the magazine, supplemented by records of registered automobile owners and telephone users. This sample included an over-representation of individuals who were rich, who, as a group, were more likely to vote for the Republican"
"politics. In 1936, his new organization achieved national recognition by correctly predicting, from the replies of only 50,000 respondents, that Franklin Roosevelt would defeat Alf Landon in the U.S. Presidential election. This was in direct contradiction to the widely respected ""Literary Digest"" magazine whose poll based on over two million returned questionnaires predicted that Landon would be the winner. Not only did Gallup get the election right, he correctly predicted the results of the ""Literary Digest"" poll as well using a random sample smaller than theirs but chosen to match it. Twelve years later, his organization had its moment of"
"bias were contributing factors, and that the error due to the initial sample taken alone would not have been sufficient to predict the Landon victory. This mistake by the ""Literary Digest"" proved to be devastating to the magazine's credibility and it ceased publishing within a few months of the election. That same year, George Gallup, an advertising executive who had begun a scientific poll, predicted that Roosevelt would win the election, based on a quota sample of 50,000 people. He also predicted that the ""Literary Digest"" would mis-predict the results. His correct predictions made public opinion polling a critical element"
"to have Republican sympathies. ""The Literary Digest"" was ignorant of this new bias; the week before election day, it reported that Alf Landon was far more popular than Roosevelt. At the same time, George Gallup conducted a far smaller (but more scientifically based) survey, in which he polled a demographically representative sample. Gallup correctly predicted Roosevelt's landslide victory. ""The Literary Digest"" soon went out of business, while polling started to take off. Elmo Roper was another American pioneer in political forecasting using scientific polls. He predicted the reelection of President Franklin D. Roosevelt three times, in 1936, 1940, and 1944."
"on ten million questionnaires mailed to readers and potential readers; 2.3 million were returned. The ""Literary Digest"", which had correctly predicted the winner of the last 5 elections, announced in its October 31 issue that Landon would be the winner with 370 electoral votes. The cause of this mistake has often been attributed to improper sampling: more Republicans subscribed to the ""Literary Digest"" than Democrats, and were thus more likely to vote for Landon than Roosevelt, and indeed every other poll made at this time predicted Roosevelt would win, although most expected him to garner no more than 360 electoral"
"the company his father had founded in 1935. The company brought statistical random sampling methods to improve the accuracy of polling, with one of the firm's early triumphs being the successful prediction that Franklin D. Roosevelt would be re-elected in the 1936 presidential election, rebutting surveys that had predicted a win for Republican challenger Alf Landon. The polls done by ""The Literary Digest"" were based on 2.4 million responses from its own upscale readers as well as car registrations and phone books, characteristics that would have been more likely at that time to select Republican voters. In contrast, Gallup used"
"vote in that state and the whole country, such straw votes gradually became more popular, but they remained local, usually citywide phenomena. In 1916, ""The Literary Digest"" embarked on a national survey (partly as a circulation-raising exercise) and correctly predicted Woodrow Wilson's election as president. Mailing out millions of postcards and simply counting the returns, ""The Literary Digest"" correctly predicted the victories of Warren Harding in 1920, Calvin Coolidge in 1924, Herbert Hoover in 1928, and Franklin Roosevelt in 1932. Then, in 1936, its 2.3 million ""voters"" constituted a huge sample, but they were generally more affluent Americans who tended"
"for the workload too low, too high, or, if the effects of the above biases happen to offset each other, ""right for the wrong reasons."" For a simple example of this effect, consider a survey that includes, ""Agree or disagree: I have enough time in my day to complete a survey."" In the 1936 U.S. presidential election, ""The Literary Digest"" mailed out 10 million questionnaires, of which 2.3 million were returned. Based on this, they predicted that Republican Alf Landon would win with 370 of 531 electoral votes; he actually got 8. Research published in 1976 and 1988 concluded that"
"votes. However, a 1976 article in ""The American Statistician"" demonstrates that the actual reason for the error was that the ""Literary Digest"" relied on voluntary responses. As the article explains, the 2.3 million ""respondents who returned their questionnaires represented only that subset of the population with a relatively intense interest in the subject at hand, and as such constitute in no sense a random sample ... it seems clear that the minority of anti-Roosevelt voters felt more strongly about the election than did the pro-Roosevelt majority."" A more detailed study in 1988 showed that both the initial sample and non-response"
"candidate. In contrast, a poll of only 50 thousand citizens selected by George Gallup's organization successfully predicted the result, leading to the popularity of the Gallup poll. Another classic example occurred in the 1948 presidential election. On election night, the Chicago Tribune printed the headline ""DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN"", which turned out to be mistaken. In the morning the grinning president-elect, Harry S. Truman, was photographed holding a newspaper bearing this headline. The reason the Tribune was mistaken is that their editor trusted the results of a phone survey. Survey research was then in its infancy, and few academics realized that"
"outcome of the 1936 presidential election, and put Alf Landon at 56%; in fact he got only 36% of the vote. AIPO predicted not only the correct result, but also the result of the ""Digest"" poll. Funk had desired a wider poll with greater cross-checking, but the costs were prohibitive. He had not questioned the poll's fundamentally flawed methodology, and derided George Gallup of AIPO as ""our fine statistical friend"". Though Funk and the ""Digest"" were good-humored and self-deprecating about the embarrassment, it hastened the ""Digest""'s decline. Funk and Cuddihy sold the ""Digest"" to Albert Shaw in June 1937 for"
"magazine, compared to the silent majority who supported Roosevelt. By contrast, scientific opinion polls taken by George Gallup correctly showed a clear lead for Roosevelt, albeit still noticeably lower than what he achieved. A way to minimize that bias is to weigh the results in order to make them more representative of the overall population. This does not make the results of the poll completely representative of the population but it does help increase the chances of the results representing the overall population. An online poll is a survey in which participants communicate responses via the Internet, typically by completing"
"Republican Party. There were also some third parties included in some of these polls, such as the Dixiecrats and the Reform Party. The Literary Digest famously predicted that Alf Landon would win based on mail-in cards sent in from their readers. It had successfully predicted the winners of the elections in 1920, 1924, 1928 and 1932. Many people believed their forecasts. George Gallup predicted very different results based on statistical random sampling. The accuracy of Gallup's forecasts was a very visible demonstration of the value of modern statistical methods. The people who mailed in cards to the Literary Digest were"
"vote than he had received in the prior elections—the second of only three presidents in US history to do so, preceded by James Madison in 1812 and followed by Barack Obama in 2012. Andrew Jackson in 1832 and Grover Cleveland in 1892 had received more electoral votes but fewer popular votes, while Woodrow Wilson in 1916 had received more popular votes but fewer electoral votes. Source (Popular Vote): Source (Electoral Vote): Margin of victory less than 1% (25 electoral votes): Margin of victory less than 5% (165 electoral votes): Margin of victory between 5% and 10% (138 electoral votes): 1944"
"more affluent with an overwhelmingly negative evaluation of Roosevelt. They were not representative of the voting public and it showed in the results. Incumbent President Roosevelt won because his New Deal programs were very popular among the American people, apart from the respondents to the Literary Digest poll. Republican nominee Alf Landon claimed that the New Deal was too costly and ineffective as well as that Roosevelt was slowly making the United States a dictatorship. However, these attacks did not gain much traction. Throughout this campaign, Roosevelt promised that he would not bring the United States into any new wars"
"history to win re-election with a lower percentage of both the electoral vote and the popular vote than in the prior election, preceded by James Madison in 1812 and followed by Barack Obama in 2012. Andrew Jackson in 1832 and Grover Cleveland in 1892 received more electoral votes but fewer popular votes, while Woodrow Wilson in 1916 received more popular votes but fewer electoral votes. Source (Popular Vote): Source (Electoral Vote): Margin of victory less than 1% (19 electoral votes): Margin of victory less than 5% (192 electoral votes): Margin of victory between 5% and 10% (83 electoral votes): 1940"
"company has continued to hold. In 1936, Gallup successfully predicted that Franklin Roosevelt would defeat Alfred Landon for the U.S. presidency in direct contradiction to the popular ""The Literary Digest""; this event popularized the company and made it a leader in American polling. In 1938, Gallup began conducting market research for advertising companies and the film industry. By 1948, Gallup's company established polling organizations in a dozen other countries and Gallup's polls were syndicated in newspapers in the U.S. and abroad. The modern Gallup Organization formed in 1958, when George Gallup grouped all of his polling operations into one organization."
"the Electoral College, he defeated Willkie by a margin of 449 to 82. Willkie did get over six million more votes than the Republican nominee in 1936, Alf Landon, and he ran strong in rural areas in the American Midwest, taking over 57% of the farm vote. Roosevelt, meanwhile, carried every American city with a population of more than 400,000 except Cincinnati, Ohio. Of the 106 cities with more than 100,000 population, he won 61% of the votes cast; in the Southern United States as a whole, he won 73% of the total vote. In the remainder of the country"
"the Democratic candidate for president increased in an almost perfect straight or linear line from 1972 to 2000, excluding the 1976 election. Fairfax believes he discovered this voting pattern and thus he named this phenomenon, The Presidential Trend. Previously, using analysis from his book’s theory, Fairfax correctly predicted the popular vote win of Barack Obama in 2008 in a press release prior to the election. His prediction was that Obama would win with 51.1% (+/- 2.7) of the popular vote. Obama won with 52.86% of the popular vote. In 2012, Fairfax’s analysis on the state of Virginia that was depicted"
"block. Clinton was the winner, with 53 percent of the vote; Trump received 36 percent while Johnson received 11 percent; this would be the second time the kids vote would not match the winner of the general election. The ""Scholastic Election"" has been conducted by Scholastic Corporation Scholastic News every election year since 1940. It claims to have predicted the final election results correctly with three exceptions: Harry S. Truman's win over Thomas Dewey in the United States presidential election, 1948, John F. Kennedy's win over Richard Nixon in the United States presidential election, 1960, and Donald Trump's win over"
"fearing that the electorate would not appreciate Taft's qualities, and that Bryan would win. Consequently, accusations abounded that the president was in effect running Taft's campaign. His larger-than-life presence in the campaign also caught the attention of journalists and humorists who bombarded the public with jokes about Taft being nothing but a Roosevelt stand-in; one suggested that ""TAFT"" stood for ""Take Advice From Theodore"". In the end, Taft defeated Bryan by 321 electoral votes to 162, carrying all but three states outside the Democratic Solid South. He also won the popular vote by a comfortable margin, receiving 7,675,320 votes (51.6"
"since Alf Landon received 36.5% of the vote in 1936. Bush had a lower percentage of the popular vote than even Herbert Hoover, who was defeated in 1932 (39.7%). However, none of these races included a major third candidate. As of the 2016 election, Bush has been the last president voted out of office after one term, as Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama were all re-elected to second terms in office. Independent candidate Ross Perot received 19,741,065 with 18.9% of the popular vote. The billionaire used his own money to advertise extensively, and is the only third-party candidate"
"data are then weighted to compensate for nonrandom nonresponse, using targets from the U.S. Census Bureau for age, region, gender, education, Hispanic ethnicity, and race. The resulting sample represents an estimated 95% of all U.S. households. From 1936 to 2008, Gallup Polls correctly predicted the winner of the presidential election with the notable exceptions of the 1948 Thomas Dewey-Harry S. Truman election, where nearly all pollsters predicted a Dewey victory (which also led to the infamous Dewey Defeats Truman headline), and 1976, when they inaccurately projected a slim victory by Gerald Ford over Jimmy Carter. For the 2008 U.S. presidential"
"more than 5% of the vote. The third party candidates reaching the 5% threshold would have dealt Clinton the critical sixth key necessary for her to lose the popular vote. Shortly before the first debate, when Gary Johnson was polling about 12 to 14 percent using the system, Lichtman cut it down to half making it about 7% so Lichtman issued a public prediction that Trump would win the election—one of the few election forecasters at the time who believed Trump would win. Earlier in the year, after the first debate, when support for third party candidates plunged nationwide, Clinton"
"of the working class that Roosevelt had swept by three-to-one margins in the 1936 election. The Hearst papers—like most major chains—had supported the Republican Alf Landon that year. In 1934, after checking with Jewish leaders to ensure a visit would be to their benefit, Hearst visited Berlin to interview Adolf Hitler. When Hitler asked why he was so misunderstood by the American press, Hearst retorted: ""Because Americans believe in democracy, and are averse to dictatorship."" Hearst's papers ran columns without rebuttal by Nazi leader Hermann Göring and Hitler himself, as well as Mussolini and other dictators in Europe and Latin"
"1936 United States elections The 1936 United States elections was held on November 3. The Democratic Party built on their majorities in both chambers of Congress and maintained control of the presidency. In the presidential election, incumbent Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt won re-election, defeating Republican Governor Alf Landon of Kansas. Roosevelt took every state but Vermont and Maine, winning with the fourth largest electoral vote margin in American history. Roosevelt took just under 61 percent of the popular vote, a number that only Lyndon Johnson would surpass (although the popular vote was not officially counted prior to the 1824"
"state’s most influential media moguls, William Randolph Hearst and Harry Chandler used their papers to solely cover Merriam’s campaign and to attack Sinclair. In the face of this coordinated opposition, and without the backing of Roosevelt, Sinclair began trailing Merriam in the polls. On November 6, 1934, Merriam defeated Sinclair with 1,138,629 (48.9%) to Sinclair’s 879,537 (37.8%). Despite his defeat, Sinclair’s vote total was the twice as large as the vote total of any Democratic candidate in California history to that point. In addition, two dozen candidates running on the EPIC platform were elected to the state legislature, including Culbert"
"the election, Trump ""falsely claim(ed) that millions of unauthorized immigrants had robbed him of a popular vote majority, ..."" Trump repeated this in a meeting with members of Congress in 2017, and in a speech in April 2018. In the 1960 United States presidential election, Democratic candidate John F. Kennedy defeated Republican candidate Richard Nixon. Kennedy is generally considered to have won the popular vote as well, by a narrow margin, but based on the unusual nature of the election in Alabama, political journalists John Fund and Sean Trende have argued that Nixon actually won the popular vote. Historian and"
"assumptions of ulterior motives behind specific opinions should be created. In this context, rejection of the assumption that opinion polls show actual links between opinions is considered important. Another source of error is the use of samples that are not representative of the population as a consequence of the methodology used, as was the experience of ""The Literary Digest"" in 1936. For example, telephone sampling has a built-in error because in many times and places, those with telephones have generally been richer than those without. In some places many people have only mobile telephones. Because pollsters cannot use automated dialing"
"but Kennedy called for new blood and claimed the Eisenhower–Nixon administration had allowed the Soviet Union to overtake the U.S. in ballistic missiles (the ""missile gap""). A new political medium was introduced in the campaign: televised presidential debates. In the first of four such debates, Nixon appeared pale, with a five o'clock shadow, in contrast to the photogenic Kennedy. Nixon's performance in the debate was perceived to be mediocre in the visual medium of television, though many people listening on the radio thought that Nixon had won. Nixon lost the election narrowly, with Kennedy ahead by only 112,827 votes (0.2"
"a straw poll regarding the likely outcome of the 1936 presidential election. Before 1936, it had always correctly predicted the winner. The 1936 poll showed that the Republican candidate, Governor Alfred Landon of Kansas, was likely to be the overwhelming winner. This seemed possible to some, as the Republicans had fared well in Maine, where the congressional and gubernatorial elections were then held in September, as opposed to the rest of the nation, where these elections were held in November along with the presidential election, as they are today. This outcome seemed especially likely in light of the conventional wisdom,"