George Gallup's Big Bet
Gallup Took A Huge Risk in the 1936 Election but Won Big.
George Gallup's Big Break, delves into the events that led up to the huge success he experienced when he accurately predicted the outcome of the presidential election of 1936. His academic credentials and genuine interest in election forecasting gave him confidence to make such an audacious wager. However, his fledgling enterprise faced financial ruin and he risked his career and reputation as well if he failed. Essentially, he put all the marbles on the line.
The Eve of the 1936 Presidential Election
David Moore’s book, The Superpollsters: How they Measure and Manipulate Public Opinion in America, portrays George Gallup as he observed the culmination of the presidential campaign in 1936:
In the waning days of the 1936 presidential election, a young man from
Princeton, New Jersey, with ‘slate-blue eyes,’ and 'the measured tread
and hunched shoulders of a plowman,’ was becoming increasingly distressed…
He suffered from insomnia, he sucked on his unlit cigarettes, he worried
incessantly that he had done some¬thing wrong and that his reputation and
financial solvency were about to be destroyed.
Indeed, it was an intense time for all concerned with this presidential election. The Literary Digest was risking its f ine name and its good reputation in its prediction. Kansas Governor Alf Landon had high hopes to solve America’s problems of the Great Depression. Roosevelt was putting his New Deal on the line as the way out of America’s distress. Perhaps, even the future of the nation was on the line in this election.
The Big Bet
A year before the election Gallup had founded the American Institute of Public Opinion. Gallup wrote a weekly opinion column and Harold Anderson sold the concept to various newspaper publishers throughout the country. With the presidential election on the horizon, Gallup and Anderson attracted newspaper publishers to buy his opinion column with a guarantee that he would refund their money if he was not able to predict who would win.
In addition, Gallup wagered that he would predict the winner more accurately than the experienced and well respected Literary Digest. Considering the stakes, they were quite high. However, it was Gallup who had to prove himself and prove his new scientific method of polling because he was relatively unknown and no true experience in predicting the outcome of a presidential contest. Few people believed that he stood a chance to win his bet.
The Aftermath of the 1936 Presidential Election
Outwardly it appeared as if it were another David and Goliath matchup. However, in this case it was science against straw, literally. The Digest based their results from 2 million returned surveys on the process of a straw poll. Gallup worked with replies of at most 5,000 respondents and using a scientific technique known as quota sampling. Roosevelt won. Science won. Gallup won, but was a bit perplexed because he had predicted F.D.R. with 57% of the popular vote, but he actually won with 61%. However, Gallup was proven right. He would become “America’s oracle.”
Of course, the Digest had a hard time digesting their humiliation. Sadly, they ceased publication and the magazine absorbed into Time Magazine in 1938. This victory helped usher in new way of presidential poll taking. It marked the demise of the reliance on straw votes and it demonstrated the reliability of scientific polling.
Sources:
The Superpollsters: How They Measure and Manipulate Public Opinion in America. David W. Moore – Four Walls Eight Windows., New York, 1995. .
Time, “The Black & White Beans”May 03, 1948
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