POLITICAL NOTES: Up with the Phoenix

Burned deep in the public mind since 1948—and as deeply burning to the "scientific" pollsters and to newsmen—was the much-printed picture of beaming, victorious Harry Truman holding up a copy of the Chicago Tribune headlined DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN. The fire had been lighted by Pollsters George Gallup, Elmo Roper, et al., who had miscalled the 1948 election. The public remembered 1948, and so did the pollsters. In 1952, though they detected the Ikeward lean with impressive accuracy, they carefully hedged their final figures with large percentages of undecided voters and other forms of insurance.

This year it was the "impressionistic"...

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