Evening star., 1936-08-16
Opinion Appraising Now
A Developed Business
BY OWEN L. SCOTT.

excitement.
BY the time November rolls around.
to judge by present signs the country
will go to the polls for the principal
purpose of deciding which of the opinion
appraisers guessed right
1t long has been custom for po-
litical parties and newspapers to take
samples of sentiment during political
campaigns. Usually these were local
samples and admittedly were subject to
wide margins of error. Their chief
purpose was to discover drifts Of
opinion.
But today opinion appraising is a
regularly developed business. operated
for profit and involved in competition.
The experts in this business seek to
find out, week by week, what the Nation
is thinking. Let any public issue i'm
press itself upon the people, and, in a
short time, the experts will come up
with what they profess is the public
reaction.
So definitely has this business caught
hold that high officials in Washington
wait breathleSsly to learn what the
weekly samples of sentiment disclose.
Moods and dispositions of individuals
move up or down with the curves on
the charts of the opinion samplers.
Certainly, this development represents
something new in democracy.
If. in the midst of controversy, an
agency with wide outlets for diSsemi-
mating its information can dive down
into the depths of national thought
and come up with answers to public
questions, based on public reaction, then
the function of Congress may become
less important.
The present election may go far to
kinds and methods of straw votes are
being set under way. Some are national,
some local. Some involve personal in
terviews; some mail; others a combina-
ton of the two. Some are going to
figure prominently over the radio; others
will function through newspapers. Be-
fore November the public may be be-
wildered by conflicting results.
X + X
Democrats are convinced that most
of the polls are going to show trend
against them. Their conviction is based
on samples taken by one of the leading
national polls and by the regular month
Charles Nicholson, director of publicity
for the Democratic National Committee,
is questioning the motives and the
methods of some important straw vote
operators.
He is joined by Henry Wallace, Secre-
tary of Agriculture, who asserts that
one national poll of farmers is utilized
for partisan purposes. An analysis of
t1iC CT Irnfn &c col IN
1000 farmers were polled in New York
State, which has 177000 farms, while
l55 were polled in Texas. which has
100000 farms, and only 81 out of 250,000
Arkansas farmers were given a chance
to vote.
Then, to top off the critical analysis,
one of the principal opinion sounding
organizations is openly discounting the
results to be disclosed by another of
the leading organizations in that field.
1t says use of methods utilized by the
competitor discloses that Gov. Landon
today would lead President Roosevelt
by SIS per cent of the total vote, as COM
pared with the Presidents As per cent.
\ * X X
The fact is that no nationally con-
Quoted straw vote in the last four pres
turn on a close election.
There were landslides in the Harding
Cox race of 1920 the Coolidge-Davis
race of 1924, the Smith-Hoover contest
of 1928 and the Roosevelt-Hoove cleo
ton of 1882. All that the prediction
polls had to do in those years was to
catch the trend. This time, in the event
of a close election, the job would be
much more difficult.
Still, the results that are being dis
closed and will be disclosed later, are not
being too heavily discounted at head
quarters.
A member of the Roosevelt cabinet
closely investigated one of the opinion
sampling methods. He convinced him
self that the formula was honestly
worked out and honestly applied. Yet
he was impressed with the thinness of
the sample vote, gathered both by mail
and by personal interviews, on which
conclusions we're based.
After one recent sharp shift in senti-
ment away from President Roosevelt
disclosed by this particular poll, the
cabinet member again looked into the
matter. In his own calculations, using
a slightly different method of comput-
ing the shift of votes, he got result
that showed the President far ahead
not only in total popular vote but in
electoral votes.
The point is, as this official empha-
sized, that many factors affect straw
vote calculations when the situation is
at all close.
Some of them are brought out in dis
cussion by Democratic officials OF the
most thorough poll to be conducted dur
ing the present campaign. In this poll
the Baltimore Sun will send ballot to
every registered voter in Maryland. This
certainly should provide fair sample.
But:
Political groups are known in the past
to have made it practice to gather
up ballots of disinterested persons and
vote them as unit.
Even distribution of ballots to regis
tered voters does not catch the first
time voters, whose attitude may be
heavily weighted in one direction.
. A certain element in the population,
often large, is not interested in marking
any straw ballot, but, on election day.
is brought to the polls and voted by the
side with the best organization.
In some States bad weather on elec-
ton day can have deciding effect II
the decision is a close one. Then, organ
ization is a highly important factor
Even in 1882. barely 80 per cent of the
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