As election season comes around, Americans across the nation get excited to find out who their new president will be. Perhaps one of the most thrilling ways to follow the presidential race is by reading the polls, which look for an early indication of who people will vote for. But how did this wildly popular election craze first come into existence?
In 1824, straw polls were conducted to see how people would be voting in the election. These polls were conducted at all sorts of grand juries, celebrations, and other public events. While newspapers reported the results, these weren’t taken as predictions of the election outcome, but rather as interesting information for readers to digest.
In 1916, that all changed when The Literary Digest published a nationwide straw poll that accurately predicted the outcome of the upcoming election. Woodrow Wilson was reelected as president, while the follow-up poll correctly named Warren G. Harding as the election winner. Three more polls were also correct, listing Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt as the winners. Suddenly, these polls piqued the interest of George Gallup.
With his aunt running to become Iowa’s first female secretary of state in 1932, Gallup conducted a poll that accurately predicted that she would win. He subsequently founded the American Institute of Public Opinion, later known simply as Gallup. In 1936, The Literary Digest predicted that Kansas Governor Alf Landon would win the upcoming election. Gallup challenged the poll, claiming that his polling methods were superior and that Roosevelt would win re-election. When Roosevelt won a landslide election, Gallup was seen as the ultimate polling authority, thus beginning the modern polling era.