How the Polls Weren’t Wrong: A Look at the 1948 and 2016 Elections

By Brennan Nick, AP World History Student and Political Strategist

 

In the 2016 election there was much discussion afterward about the polls being wrong, being off, or being untrustworthy. This, however, has been greatly exaggerated compared to the reality of what happened. Yes, polls in Michigan and Pennsylvania predicted Hillary Clinton to be the winner, but the margins overall were close enough that a Trump victory would have been within the margin of error. The one exception to this margin of error was Wisconsin, and only Wisconsin, where the polls both predicted Hillary to be the winner, and did not have a possibility of a Trump victory within the margin of error. Another example of how the polls were still fairly accurate was in the average of the national polls (the popular vote) which predicted Clinton to win by a 3.2 point margin over Trump. The final results of the election was a Clinton lead by 2.1 points. The difference between the polls and the reality was 1.1 point, hardly anything out of the ordinary.

 

Now, one election where the polls were in fact wildly off was the 1948 election between Harry S. Truman and Thomas E. Dewey. Harry S. Truman was the incumbent as he was the vice-president when FDR died of a stroke in April 1945. Going into the election Dewey, a Republican, was seen as the clear favorite to win after 16 years of a Democrat in the White House. This was further supported by the situation Truman–a Democrat–was in. The Democratic party had a three-way divide at the time between the far left of the party and the far right of the party; each of which split off into the Progressive Party and the Southern Dixiecrat party respectively. This then left only the center of the party which was now being led by Truman who was facing plummeting popularity when the elections began.

 

The stage was set and the candidates played their cards. Long story short, Dewey and his supporters were so sure that he was bound to win that they decided to run a campaign where all he had to do was not make any glaring mistakes and he would win the Presidency. His speeches were filled with non-political optimism, unity of the country, and broad, vague, optimistic goals including his now notorious quote, “You know that your future is still ahead of you.” Moreover, he avoided–as if his life depended on it–any issue that could be considered controversial. Truman, on the other hand, knowing that he was behind, took up an aggressive, slash-and-burn campaign and held nothing back. He mocked Dewey and the Republican Party and called out Dewey by name, criticizing him. However, as Truman went around the nation spewing fire against his opponents, he was the only one who still believed he could win. His own campaign members considered it “a last hurrah,” and his wife later admitted to having private doubts during the campaign.

 

On election night, the Dewey campaign was confidently waiting in a New York City hotel room, and newspapers had already printed a “Dewey win” on their front pages. Everyone, the polls, the journalists, even Truman’s closest supporters, expected a Dewey win. That, however, was a victory the Dewey Campaign would not have. Truman ended up overcoming all of the odds and won the election, coming within 1% of several, tipping-point, swing states. Even at the end of election day, NBC still predicted Dewey to be the winner once late returns came in. However, once the morning came, it was clear that Harry S. Truman won the election, and a picture was taken of him defiantly holding The Chicago Tribune which was printed the night before with the headline

“DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN.” 

 

What happened? Well, the largest explanation is that this was one of the first elections in which polling was in fact extensively used, and, as such, it had many flaws. The largest of these was the belief that the vast majority of all voters in an election make their choice before October and that the fall campaigns just simply would not sway many voters. However, as it turned out, according to historian William Manchester, “Gallup’s September 24 report foresaw 46.5% for Dewey to 38% for Truman. His last column, appearing in the Sunday papers two days before the election, showed Truman gaining sharply – to 44 percent – and the interviews on which it was based had been conducted two weeks earlier. The national mood was shifting daily, almost hourly.” Later polling revealed that roughly 15% of Truman’s voters decided to vote for him within the last two weeks of the election. Perhaps all of this can be attributed to the difference between Truman’s decisiveness and Dewey’s indifference that swayed the voters.

 

Whatever may have been the case, neither this election nor the 2016 election provide any reason to believe in the future that polling will be that far off, much less flat out wrong. Polling gets it just about . . . right.

 

Editor: Charles Schnell