In 1936, the Literary Digest magazine predicted an overwhelming presidential victory for Alfred Landon who was running against Franklin Roosevelt. They predicted that Roosevelt would only get 43 % of...

In 1936, the Literary Digest magazine predicted an overwhelming presidential victory for Alfred Landon who was running against Franklin Roosevelt. They predicted that Roosevelt would only get 43 % of the vote based on a sample of 2.4 million people. However, Roosevelt won the election with a landslide vote of 62–38 %. This is the largest error ever made by a major poll. George Gallup was just beginning his company. Using his own statistical methods, he predicted what the Digest’s predictions were going to be in advance of their publication with an error of only 1 %. Find out where the Digest went wrong. Discuss how Gallup predicted the Digest results so well. After all he only had 36,000 people in his random sample.