Tough Spot

Political dopesters last week rated the Presidential election virtually a 50-50 bet.

Most pollsters still found Roosevelt ahead but with Willkie coming up, with still a chance of winning if the trend continued.

> George Gallup (Institute of Public Opinion) last week found a 1/2% increase in Willkie's popular vote (to 45.5%), an increase of four in electoral votes (to 121), 7% of the voters still undecided. But ten key Roosevelt States were well within the poll's 4% margin of error, and the trend to Willkie had not been stopped. Preparing for the worst, Gallup confessed: ". . . There are . . . factors . . . which cannot be measured by scientific methods."

> FORTUNE'S poll reported 57% of U. S. voters with opinions (6.5% were undecided) on Franklin Roosevelt's side, but pointed out that his majority was concentrated in the South and West, which he had anyway, and Wendell Willkie could still bring home the bacon by stepping up his slight advantage in the East and Middle West.

> Publisher Emil Hurja fortnight ago flaunted a possible Willkie landslide by as much as 5,000,000 to 8,000,000 votes. Last week his Pathfinder poll dumped the whole outcome in Pennsylvania's lap -- whoever won the Keystone State won the election.

> With 67% of its straw votes in, the New York Daily News couldn't find a percentage point in favor of either candidate in New York State. The poll stood 50.0 to 50.0 early this week, and the News trotted out some talk about scientific weighting at poll's end to produce the winner.

> Nearly all Midwest polls -- Columbus Dispatch, Chicago Tribune, Chicago Times, Scripps Howard's Ohio poll, etc. -- showed Willkie still coming up, but more slowly than last fortnight.

> Perplexed bookies kept the odds at about the previous week's figure: 7-to-5 on Roosevelt. The New York World-Telegram figured that ardent voters had backed their favorites with some $3,500,000.

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