Failures
The best-known failure of opinion polling to date in the United States was the prediction that Thomas Dewey would defeat Harry S. Truman in the 1948 US presidential election. Major polling organizations, including Gallup and Roper, indicated a landslide victory for Dewey.
In the United Kingdom, most polls failed to predict the Conservative election victories of 1970 and 1992, and Labour's victory in 1974. However, their figures at other elections have been generally accurate.
Read more about this topic: Opinion Poll
Famous quotes containing the word failures:
“Mistakes, scandals, and failures no longer signal catastrophe. The crucial thing is that they be made credible, and that the public be made aware of the efforts being expended in that direction. The “marketing” immunity of governments is similar to that of the major brands of washing powder.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“If tragedy elicits our compassion, comedy appeals to our self-interest. The former confronts life’s failures with noble fortitude, the latter seeks to circumvent them with shrewd nonchalance. The one leaves us momentarily in a mood of resignation, the other in a condition of euphoria.”
—Harry Levin (b. 1912)
“We must choose. Be a child of the past with all its crudities and imperfections, its failures and defeats, or a child of the future, the future of symmetry and ultimate success.”
—Frances E. Willard 1839–1898, U.S. president of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union 1879-1891, author, activist. The Woman’s Magazine, pp. 137-40 (January 1887)