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" doorbell-ringer Samuel Lubell (TIME, Oct. 15), who climbed farthest out on the limb. While making no percentage predictions, he correctly forecast an Ike landslide and added that Ike would take all the big industrial states. Moreover he pinpointed the newest political trend: the breakup of the former Democratic majorities in the nation's big cities. But Gallup and Roper hit as close to perfection as anybody could reasonably expect. In their final forecasts, published just before Election Day, the Big Two had Ike landsliding with 59.5% (Gallup) and 60% (Roper). Actual 1956 result: Ike 57.7%. Gallup correctly predicted the shifts to the G.O.P. among Negroes, labor, and big-city dwellers. Although both underestimated the G.O.P.'s hold on the South (Gallup had put it at 44%, Roper at 46%, while the final Ike count was 51%), 1956 was the year the pollsters arose from the embers.

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