Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1936-10-17
Peculiarities in Polls
With Every Voter of Barometer State Polled,
Machine Could Influence Results.

technique for taking an accurate poll.
They accept the Digest's forecast as
authoritative. They think Landon will
win.
On the other hand, at least one other
Nationwide poll. the Gallup one,
points at this stage toward victory for
Mr.. Roosevelt. This poll has a very
narrow base. 1t reaches only small
fraction Of the voters-while the Di-
gest poll reaches about Is per cent.
Several local polls, conducted by
newspapers. also point toward o
Roosevelt victory. About daily news
paper polls, 1t is to be borne in mind
that most OF them, because Of the ma
ture Of the territory daily papers serve,
reflect city voters to a disproportionate
degree. And city voters tend to vote
for Mr.. Roosevelt to a greater degree
than rural and small town voters.
Maryland Causes Confusion.
The poll that has caused most ques-
tioning of the Digest poll is the Mary
land one, conducted by the Baltimore
Sun. The returns favor Mr.. Roosevelt,
overwhelmingly. They give Mr.. Roose-
welt $3.50 per cent OF the total, Lam
don only 1888 per cent.
This Maryland poll is regarded as a
national barometer, because Maryland
has been barometer State. In every
presidential year since and including
1892, the party that won the popular
vote in Maryland has also won the ma
tional election. From this it Is as
sumed that If this year Maryland is
going for Mr.. Roosevelt, the Nation
will do the same. Especially would
this follow if Maryland goes for Roose-
welt in anything like the proportion in
Dictated by the Baltimore Suns poll.
Because this Maryland poll points OPP
posite to the Digest one, it is widely re-
garded as neutralizing the Digests
forecast.
1t may be that this year Maryland
is not as good barometer as formerly
There is a new factor, the Negro
vote, which in Maryland is quite
large, and which this year for the
first time will vote mainly Democratic.
Peculiarities in Poll.
The are some extraordinary cir
cumstances about the Maryland poll.
Ballots were sent to every voter.
TIL ,007 Of them. Out of these, 101,-
283 were returned to the Sun by the
post Office, with notice that the ad-
dress was wrong or that the ad-
dressee had died or moved. That is,
more than one out of every eight reg
istered voters in Maryland was not
found at the address given on the
registration lists. This is large
proportion.
OF the roughly $4,000 voters reach
ed, 4165 replied. This is most
extraordinary percentage. Ordinarily.
newspapers which conduct polls do
not expect to get back more than 20
per cent or so of the ballots they
send out. The Maryland result seems
to suggest that some one. presum-
ably local political leaders or zealots,
may have made it their business to
get ballots marked and returned. II
there is anything in this surmise, ap-
parently the Democrats must have
been more energetic.
If this innovation OF straw. polls
goes on. experience will teach some
thing about methods. Specifically,
it would seem that polling every voter
would be the best possible method.
Actually. careful sampling Of the
electorate may get results more &C
curate. Polling the whole electorate,
with every one knowing it is being
done. gives opportunity for partisans
or zealots to organize and stimulate
returns for their favorites. Polling
the whole electorate amounts to du-
plicating the actual election-but with
out the safeguards which 1t has been
found necessary to set up about &C
tual elections.
tCopyright, 1850