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By 1948 most polls had caught onto that problem. What happened in 1948 is simpler, all elections get closer as you approach election day. The reason for this is as election day approached people actually start to think of who to vote for. All the campaigning prior to that point is to paint the Candidate in the best light so on election day people vote for them.
The best way to look at this is the old joke about soap. If you were to stop people on the street and ask them what soap they have at home, you will hear all types of soaps, most based on what is advertised on TV (A lot of people will say "Irish Spring" for they use to adversities a lot, other names will be mentioned, Dove etc based on what people have heard). On the other hand if you go into they homes you will see what they do have, you will tend to find Ivory soap, a soap with a very small advertising budget but a good soap. Why the Difference? The first set of question is off the top of people's head without them actually thinking of what they would buy. People will go with a name they have heard the most. On the other hand as you actually go shopping for soap you actually have to look at what you are buying and get the most for your money. Ivory wins at that point.
The same with elections, as we near election day people actually starts to think of who they are going to vote for. Before that date, they give out the name they heard the most of, but as election day approaches voters start to look at both candidates and pick one. In the case of Harry S Truman, people saw his approach to Civil Rights, to the post WWII recession (he had nibbed it in the bud by delaying the discharge of Veterans, the GI Bill to get those Veterans in Collage not in the work lines AND by increase spending), his actions in Western Europe to prevent the spread of Communism (The Marshall Plan) his fairly even handedness with the Unions (He had veto the Taft-Hartley Act, passed by a GOP controlled House and Senate, while talking down the unions from asking for what he considered excessive wage increases) and his "Fair Deal" efforts. Truman's "endorsement" of the GOP program as set forth in their Convention and then calling the GOP controlled Congress into session to pass what the GOP said they were for, was classic. Truman showed that the GOP were NOT in favor of what they said they were in their election program, if they were, the GOP Controlled Congress could have passed it and Truman would have signed it. Instead the GOP Congress called it election grand standing for Truman to Call Congress into session and passed almost nothing (The GOP Congress did pass a law, making the 1949 inauguration the largest inauguration ever, but that was suppose to be a GOP victory march, not a Truman I told you I would win march).
Anyway, once the voter was in the Voting booth, he reviewed both Candidates and voted Democratic. Worse for the GOP, people voted Democratic right down the line, i.e. Truman won election AND the Democrats won control of the House and Senate (retaining the House till 1994).
Given Truman's victory, the pollsters went back and check on what was happening in the week before the election. What they found was the above, people talked of the two Candidates and decided Truman was the one they were going to vote for, whether he won or lost. The shift was quick and most pollsters seeing the number two weeks before could NOT believe people would change that quickly had actually stop taking polls.
Today, polls are taken up till and even during the Voting do to that error, an error built into the campaign system. People will take into information up till the election but only truly digest it in the days BEFORE the election. If you run a weak campaign it will bit you in the ass and that is the lesson of the 1948 Campaign.
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