Question

What did we learn from the results of the ​harrisburg pennsylvanian and literary digest polls?

Answer 1

The Harrisburg Pennsylvanian and The Literary Digest polls were the pioneers on conducting presidential straw polls in The United States. The Harrisburg Pennsylvanian did the first vote poll in 1824, while The Literary Digest started in the year 1916.

Both newspapers are remembered not only for being the pioneers on using this specific type of polling, but also for what the results that these threw showed the population. In the case of The Harrisburg Pennsylvanian, although the results of the poll during the presidential race between Andrew Jackson and Quincy Adams were correct ( Jackson got the majority of the votes against Adams), they were not a representation of who the actual winner was going to be, as Adams became the president when the election was thrown to the House of Representatives for a lack of electoral votes.

Meanwhile, The Literary Digest got the accurate results wit the presidential polls they conducted from the year 1916 until 1932. but everything came to an end with the presidential election of 1936, where the magazine predicted that  Alfred Landon was going to defeat Franklin D Roosevelt.  

The public learned from the results that although sometimes accurate, if polls are using bad sampling techniques, they are most probably going to be inaccurate at some point. Straw polls, although commonly used to see the opinion of the masses on different matters, are not considered scientific enough to use for important affairs such an presidential race.

Answer 2

The bad sampling methods cant cure the problem by increasing the number of sample voters is what we learn from the results of  Harrisburg Pennsylvanian and literary digest polls.

Further Explanation:

The Literary digest polls had always predicted right winner for the president through it polls before year 1936. They predicted every president correctly in their pools for 1920 elections, 1924 elections, 1928 elections and 1932 elections. But their prediction for 1936 elections was wrong by 19%. in 1963, they polled over 2 million of its subscribers by sampling them and asking them to send their samples back and on the bases of that poll they declared Alf London to win the elections but what happened was a complete reverse as Roosevelt won the elections convincingly. After the final election results were out, Literary digest was thrashed by readers for its wrong prediction. But what went wrong for them?. After reviewing the cause of this failure, they found out that the two million people they polled as samples were not representatives of majority of Americans as period of ‘Great Depression’ was going on in America. The subscribers of digest was also wealthier then rest of American people as subscription of the Digest was costly. Subscribers of the Digest owned telephones and cars but on the other hand people who voted for Roosevelt belonged to poor class. So the learning outcome from this was a survey has to conducted among every class of people to get better pre-poll survey result.  

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Answer details:

Grade: High School

Subject: History

Chapter: The Literary Digest

Keywords: Survey, Poll, Elections, Literary Digest, Roosevelt, Samples, Million, Subscription, Election, Election Results.