It was not until the later decades into the twentieth century that we had any form of systematic polling to determine how many people would likely vote for which candidate. Before that time, the only method that newspaper and magazine editors could use was the informal poll, commonly referred to as the straw poll. In the late 1800s and the early 1900s, the editors of many newspapers began to conduct informal polls by asking groups of people (usually ranging from 25 to 100) their opinion of a candidate. For example, if a newspaperhad a number of 300,000, there would typically be no more than 100 people polled in its informal poll. The editors then used the results of these polls to predict who would win the election. Because of this method, there was very little, if any, formal or informal discussion or campaigning among the candidates, since they could assume that with the number of people who supported their candidacy, they would likely win the election.
As time went by, the development of more organized and systematic polling changed the methods used to determine how many votes a candidate would receive. This started with The Literary Digest poll which began in 1916 and quickly became widely accepted as a reliable method to predict the winner of presidential elections. In following years, it had accurately predicted many presidential elections, thus further reinforcing the belief of the general public that polling was a reliable tool to determine who may win the election. However, there was a serious flaw in the methodology of this type of polling.
As a result of this keg failing by The Literary Digest, George Gallup introduced a scientific method of polling that included sampling, quality of respondents, along with quantity. Gallup realised that rather than getting millions of responses by randomly sampling everyone in the country, he should focus on a small group of respondents that represented the country based upon age, income, gender and geographical location.
In addition, through this
method, Gallup demonstrated that having a well defined sample can properly predict election outcomes and can accurately reflect the opinions of the voters. Due to the development of this method by Gallup, this approach quickly became the benchmark of current political polling. The transition from early straw polls to the scientific polling methods used today, has become the standard of both politics and the media.
