Roots of U.S. Political Polls
Presidential Polls in Colonial America and the Early 1900s
Straw votes in Colonial America and the earliest poll predicting the 1824 presidential election. Also, accurate predictions of presidential elections in the early 1900s.
Opinion polls in the United States have grown to become big business since their roots in Colonial America. In 2005, a Wired magazine article on opinion polling, placed industry revenue at $6.6 billion dollars. Today statisticians, mathematicians, and other scholars develop careers calculating the implications of what people think. Citizens today are seemingly overwhelmed with one opinion poll after another revealing the current leader in campaign marathons to decide our next Chief Executive. Whether you are amused or annoyed by political polls, one must wonder how it got started.
In an age when it took three days to travel from New York City to Philadelphia, political polls (although crude and unscientific) were born. The forerunner of our current opinion industry was the local "straw vote." As early as the 1800s, U.S. newspapers and magazines attempted to get the scoop on what the public thought of presidential candidates and conducted "straw polls" or "straw votes." This term "straw poll" seems to have had its roots in rural colonial America, but possibly originated long before from ancient agrarian ancestors. It relates to an old idiom referring to a farmer holding up a thin straw or throwing straws into the wind to see which way the wind was blowing. Such polls were intended to determine the direction of the political winds.
The earliest recorded public poll regarding the favorability of presidential candidates occurred in 1824 as President James Monroe's term was ending. The popular military hero, Andrew Jackson, took on John Quincy Adams who was the Secretary of State at the time. During the election, The Harrisburg Pennsylvanian conducted a straw vote among citizens in Wilmington, Delaware. It revealed that Jackson led Adams by 335 votes to 169 votes and predicted accurately that General Jackson would win the popular vote. However, there were a total of four candidates and none won a majority of electoral votes and the election had to be decided by the House of Representatives. Adams was determined the victor. This precedent was nearly revisited once again in the election between Al Gore and George W. Bush.
As the young nation grew, such straw votes became more and more popular, but were not usually conducted beyond the local city limits. Magazines and newspapers continued polling public opinion on popular issues of the day. At the turn of the century, a popular magazine, the Literary Digest,took public opinion polling to another level. The magazine was started in 1890 by two former Lutheran ministers named Isaac Funk and Adam Wagnalls (of dictionary and encyclopedia fame). The Funk & Wagnalls Company published the Literary Digest on a weekly basis with one feature being a regular poll titled "America Speaks." Samples for such weekly polls were basically drawn from telephone books or automobile registrations. During the presidential election of 1916, the magazine attempted to increase their circulation by creating a national survey and mailed over 10 million questionnaires to determine public opinion towards the candidates. Their return responses allowed them to correctly predict the election of Woodrow Wilson. Thus, the seeds of the industry were planted and the U.S. is providing a great annual harvest.
Sources:
Mass Media: Opposing Viewpoints Byron L. Stay, book editor, 1999, Greenhaven Press
American Government and Politics Today: The Essentials Bardes, Shelley, Schmidt, 2008, Thomson Wadsworth (part of the Thomson Corporation)
