Situation Wanted

The public-opinion pollsters, said President Truman on Election Day, "are going to be red-faced tomorrow." He was right. Not since the Literary Digest fiasco of 1936 had opinion-samplers come such a cropper.

On the day before election, the Gallup poll gave Dewey 49.5% of the total vote, Truman 44.5%. On the day after election, red-faced Dr. George H. Gallup had two alibis: "Truman recaptured many votes from Wallace. Also, a lot of the 'undecided voters' in the poll voted for Truman." Poll-taking, he added, was still "an infant science."

Redder-faced still was FORTUNE'S Pollster Elmo Roper. He had predicted a Dewey landslide comparable only to Roosevelt's victory over Landon. He was so sure of it that, on Sept. 9, he said he would report no more figures unless there was a significant change. On election eve, he had found none, said: "I stand by my prediction. Mr. Dewey is in." But Roper, who had predicted the three previous presidential elections within .2 to 1.2% of accuracy, had no alibis. Said he: "How did we go wrong? I frankly do not know."

Many other faces were red. The Crossley poll's Archibald M. Crossley had given a final prediction of Dewey's election by 51% (to Truman's 42%). Fifty Washington correspondents, most of them bureau chiefs, had unanimously predicted a Dewey victory in a Newsweek poll. On election night the Chicago Tribune headlined: DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN. In a pre-election photograph, LIFE had unreservedly captioned Dewey "The next President." TIME was just as wrong as everybody else.

A tiny handful of prophets had escaped being caught with their pants down. On the Truman campaign train, a few days before the election, Columnist Jay Franklin, now a Truman speech writer, had bet newsmen that Truman would win with at least 278 electoral votes. Jack Kroll, director of C.I.O.'s Political Action Committee, also had declared: "Truman is going to win in spite of what the polls say. The polls [are] cockeyed."

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