Polling is an inexact science. Much of the equipment and software we all use is based on how developers interpret our needs and translate them into products. They do this by asking us questions about what we do and how we do it.

In 1936, the Literary Digest, a popular magazine of the time, conducted a telephone poll of its readership about who would win the presidency. It concluded that Governor Alf Landon of Kansas would beat incumbent Franklin Roosevelt. The readership of the Digest was basically Republican (as Landon and perhaps many telephone owners were). But FDR won one of the biggest landslides in political history, with 75 percent of the popular vote and all the electoral votes except two; Literary Digest went out of business afterwards.

In the 1940s, Roper and Gallup improved polling techniques. But in the 1948 election most of the polls awarded the election to Governor Tom Dewey of New York as opposed to incumbent Harry Truman. Truman won and showed off a headline from the Republican Chicago Tribune saying “DEWEY WINS.”