Ninety years ago, on Oct. 31, 1936, Literary Digest, which had correctly forecast presidential election winners since 1916, predicted that Alf Landon would beat Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the upcoming election.
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Landon → forecast → election
Roosevelt won handily.
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Roosevelt → win → ?
The Digest’s poll surveyed 10 million people via postcard, using telephone books and car registration lists for the information.
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poll → survey → information
Even though almost 2.4 million people responded — an impressive response rate — the misleading sample provided inaccurate results.
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sample → respond → results
Literary Digest folded shortly afterward.
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Digest → fold → ?
Two years later, in 1938, Gallup started tracking presidential approval ratings.
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Gallup → start → ratings
Even so, polls remained far from perfect.
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polls → remain → ?
In 1948, the Chicago Daily Tribune’s embarrassing front-page declaration "Dewey Defeats Truman" stemmed in part from a misuse of polling.
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Dewey → defeat → polling
The paper relied on earlier polls that did not reflect the Election Day reality in making its prediction.
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that → rely → prediction
As the science of polling improved over time, campaign pros began to rely on pollsters.
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pros → improve → pollsters
John F. Kennedy was the first president to be strongly associated with a polling firm, as he used Lou Harris and the Harris organization's polls in his 1960 campaign for president.
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he → associate → president
In the 1970s, we witnessed the rise of the celebrity pollsters: Pat Caddell for Jimmy Carter, Richard Wirthlin for Ronald Reagan, and Stan Greeberg and Dick Morris for Bill Clinton.
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we → witness → Clinton
He misjudged the public mood, and Carter’s "malaise speech" became one of the most disastrous presidential speeches of all time.
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speech → misjudge → time
Morris, for his part, had a tempestuous relationship with Bill Clinton.
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Morris → have → Clinton
They once reportedly came to blows while Morris was advising Clinton during his time as governor of Arkansas.
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Morris → come → Arkansas
Morris was initially on the outs and Greenberg in charge of polls when Clinton won the 1992 election.
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Clinton → win → election
But Morris secretly came back and started advising Clinton after the Democrats lost control of Congress in the 1994 "Republican Revolution."
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Democrats → come → Revolution
Morris even had a code name — "Charlie" — to keep his identity secret from the more liberal White House staff, which resented Morris’ pushing of Clinton to the center.
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which → have → center
Morris would poll everything, even where Clinton should go on vacation.
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Clinton → poll → vacation
When Clinton left office after two terms in 2000, he had survived the Monica Lewinsky scandal — despite polls showing that Americans strongly disapproved of Clinton's behavior.
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Americans → leave → behavior
He left office at 66%, one of the highest outgoing figures in history.
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He → leave → history
21st-century presidents would be thrilled to get approval ratings anywhere near Clinton's final number.
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presidents → get → number
George W. Bush hit 86% after the 9/11 terror attacks, but that did not last.
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that → hit → attacks
For the most part, the "low and steady" phenomenon has meant that presidents in this century have struggled to get about 50% approval.
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presidents → mean → approval
Still, the polling mishaps have continued.
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mishaps → continue → ?
In 2004, exit polls predicted a win for John Kerry over George W. Bush.
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polls → predict → Bush
Campaign adviser Bob Shrum even said to Kerry on Election Day, "Can I be the first to call you, Mr. President?"
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I → say → you
The exit polls were wrong, and Bush won a second term.
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Bush → win → term
In 2012, Mitt Romney’s campaign wrongly thought it was headed for victory when its pollster made overly optimistic weighting assumptions.
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pollster → think → assumptions
The turnout model incorrectly assumed that Barack Obama would not generate the same level of youth and minority turnout that he had in 2008.
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he → assume → 2008
Polling took another big hit in 2016, when pollsters confidently predicted that Hillary Clinton would defeat Donald Trump.
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Clinton → take → Trump
She didn't, and the pollsters’ justification that they had the popular vote right but got the election result wrong did not help matters.
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result → do → matters
In our current midterm elections, we have seen a new wrinkle.
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we → see → wrinkle
Partisan polls overstated progressive support in the primaries, skewing the results and causing some candidates to drop out in the face of the inaccurate data.
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candidates → overstate → data
This latest mishap reinforces the lesson that polling often fails, although rarely in the same way twice.
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polling → reinforce → way
While technology and the science of polling are much better today than in 1936, the improvements complicate matters further.
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improvements → complicate → matters
While nearly everyone has a phone, they also have caller ID and don't answer calls from unfamiliar numbers.
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they → have → numbers
Response rates shrink, increasing the size of the "silent majority."
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rates → shrink → majority
In this new environment, human modeling decisions ironically become more, not less, important.
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decisions → become → environment
Polling errors come not from new techniques or technologies but from imperfect human decisions about how to deploy the new technologies.
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errors → come → technologies
…and 4 more, not listed.
The Aporia
