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.Roosevelt won handily.
The Digest’s poll surveyed 10 million people via postcard, using telephone books and car registration lists for the information.Even though almost 2.4 million people responded — an impressive response rate — the misleading sample provided inaccurate results.
Literary Digest folded shortly afterward.Two years later, in 1938, Gallup started tracking presidential approval ratings.Even so, polls remained far from perfect.
In 1948, the Chicago Daily Tribune’s embarrassing front-page declaration "Dewey Defeats Truman" stemmed in part from a misuse of polling.The paper relied on earlier polls that did not reflect the Election Day reality in making its prediction.As the science of polling improved over time, campaign pros began to rely on 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.A Maine resident casts their ballot at a polling station inside the Augusta Civic Center on June 9, 2026, in Augusta, Maine.
Maine voters will decide in primaries for U.S.Senate and U.S.
House.(CJ Gunther/Getty Images)LEE CARTER: AMERICA IS ANGRY AT EVERYONE — BUT WHO WILL ACTUALLY VOTE?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.
These pollsters were successful but not infallible.Caddell, for instance, was largely responsible for Carter's 1979 "Crisis of Confidence" speech.He misjudged the public mood, and Carter’s "malaise speech" became one of the most disastrous presidential speeches of all time.Morris, for his part, had a tempestuous relationship with Bill Clinton....