Of Polls, Mountains U.S. Journalists and Their Use of Election Surveys

Polls are a prominent feature of U.S. election news coverage. Although polls are used to explain voter opinion, they are employed mostly to fuel horse-race coverage and to craft images consis- tent with the candidates' positions in the race. Moreover, U.S. journalists sometimes misinterpret polls by slighting the possibility that changes in candidate preference are the result of survey error rather than real change. On balance, U.S. journalists' dependence on polls adversely affects the quality of American election coverage. Everyone knows that Harry Truman charged from behind in 1948 to edge out Thomas Dewey on the strength of his "give-'em-hell" style and a barnstorm- ing whistle-stop campaign that traversed America. Truman's blunt talk and boundless energy captured Americans' imagination, gaining their confidence and winning their votes. Truman's closing rush makes a nice story, but it was not the story that jour- nalists told during the 1948 campaign. Instead, the press portrayed Truman as a weak candidate whose stridency was a sign of desperation. In its November 1, 1948, issue, Newsweek described Truman as "a woefully weak little man, a nice enough fellow but wholly inept." Although some reporters believed Truman was making inroads, they were far outnumbered by the skeptics. In a front-page story the day before the election, the New York Times declared, "The rosy prospect of victory for the Truman ticket on Election Day finds no credence outside Mr. Truman's kitchen cabinet." Time polled forty-seven journalists; all of them predicted a Truman defeat. America's journalists were suffering from a shortage of polls. America's leading polling firm, Gallup, released its final survey three weeks before the election, which, like earlier ones, showed Truman far off the lead. Expecting him to lose, reporters supplied Truman with an image fit for a loser.