Straw Votes: A Study of Political Prediction

Excerpt from Straw A Study of Political PredictionThis research, interestingly enough, had its beginnings in a class in Vital Statistics. The lecture for the day - it was in October, 1928, when the hoover-smith campaign for the presidency was at its height - was on the use of sampling in the study of the preva lence of morbidity, and the discussion quite naturally veered to the somewhat spectacular attempt then being 'made by the Literary Digest to sample the presidential preferences of the people on a nation-wide scale. Would the results of this straw-vote sample be corroborated by the official election -returns, and would the technique of sampling find general use in the political field as it had in the field of public health? The curiosity of one of the participants in that discussion was aroused to the point of making further inquiry. He secured the final straw-vote returns and compared them with the official election figures. In some states the proportionate division of the straw vote between candidates was found to be quite similar to_ the division recorded in the official balloting, but in other states the similarity was less pronounced. What caused this-varia tion in the predictive reliability of the straw poll? Was the answer to be found in the sampling technique employed? In the size of the return? In change of voting intention after the straw ballots had been marked? Here, indeed, were intriguing problems.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.