Poll watchers beware.........

[suston96]

The Truman victory was also an embarrassment for the emerging public opinion polling community. Truman's 4.4 percentage point election margin contrasted with the pre-election polls predicting a Dewey victory ranging between 5 to 15 percentage points. After the election, analysts attributed the polls' failure largely to completing their surveys too early, thus missing a late swing in voter sentiment in favor of the President. Ironically, the polls themselves may have helped Truman's late surge to overcome Dewey when press reports of their surveys showing Dewey ahead energized the Democrats to mount late efforts to increase turnout, and made the Republicans over-confident of any need to get their own voters to the polls. George Gallup, founder of the firm bearing his name, was forced according to his son, "...to visit many newspaper clients after the election to lure them back after 30 canceled their poll service." Gallup's competitor, Elmo Roper, also faced potential ruin from the mistake. Reflecting years later, Roper's son said that he and his father, both Democrats, had decidedly mixed emotions: "We saw our man winning, but our company going down the tubes." See "Pollsters recall 1948 fiasco", PolkOnline.com

http://www.eagleton.rutgers.edu/e-gov/e-politicalarchive-1948election.htm