[Ads-l] dark poll

[Jim Parish]

Laurence Horn wrote:
> I know there were some Republican-friendly polls that were apparently 
> widely believed at the time that predicted Romney, but I don't recall 
> whether Gallup was among them. There was the famous example (I assume 
> actual and not apocryphal) of polls that predicted a landslide defeat 
> of the Democratic candidate (Truman vs. Dewey? FDR vs. somebody?) that 
> was flawed by having been conducted by telephone at a time when many 
> voters were too poor to have one. But that wasn't a dark poll, just a 
> stupid one.

The poll you're referring to was by Liberty Magazine in 1936 - FDR vs 
Landon. Truman vs Dewey was 1948, and Dewey led by such a margin in 
early polling that the pollsters stopped polling in, I think, September, 
and missed Truman's big comeback.

Jim Parish

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