Conspiracy of the Polls against Barack Obama

[John Simkin]

The public opinion polls again got it wrong over Barack Obama's winning margin. It has been much discussed in the British media but not once has anyone considered the possibility of political manipulation. This is what happened in the 1944 Presidential Election. At the time, Britain had an intelligence agent (British Security Coordination) working for George Gallup, who ran the largest polling company in the United States. Gallup was a close friend of Thomas Dewey and tried very hard to make him the Republican Party candidate in the 1944 Presidential Election. The British Security Coordination secret report claimed that the "Gallup Poll did not prove a reliable guide to the Presidential election of 1944. This was so, largely because Gallup is himself a Republican and a staunch supporter of Dewey. As William Stephenson (the head of BSC) learned, there was little doubt that Gallup deliberately adjusted his figures in Dewey's favour in the hope of stampeding the electorate." Ernest Cuneo, another BSC agent told Stephenson: "Dewey is one of Gallup's principal clients... Dewey is calling up Gallup so often they have to have a clerk to answer him."

Gallup was also accused of trying to get Thomas Dewey elected against Harry S. Truman in the 1948 Presidential Election. Truman lost all nine of the Gallup Poll's post-election surveys. In late September, Dewey had a 17 point lead. According to Albert E. Sindlinger, who worked for Gallup, claimed that "before the 1948 election Dewey and Gallup were on the phone constantly. Dewey was looking for a handle on public opinion and he turned to George Gallup." Sindlinger says Gallup deliberately rigged the polls to favour Dewey. "Gallup's sample excluded people who hadn't voted before. I found that they were heavily pro-Truman, but Gallup just didn't count them." Sindlinger added: "We'd set up the headlines and draft the story, and then we would go out and do the surveys to fill in the gaps. If the results squared with our story, we'd congratulate ourselves on how smart we were. But if they didn't, then the data would be adjusted, supposedly because there was something wrong with the sample."

Gallup was severely embarrassed by Truman winning with 49.6%of the vote compared to 45.1% for Dewey. Sindlinger believes that Gallup's biased polls helped to defeat Dewey as it made the Republicans over-confident. Sindlinger admits that during the campaign he came across a lot of people who said they would not bother to vote because Dewey was a certainty: "pollsters may deny it, but if you look at the evidence it's overwhelmingly clear that polls do influence people."

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/SPYgallup.htm

[Len Colby]

The polls weren't that fall off the RCP average was a difference of 0.7% but if you look just at the larger more reputable polls it comes out to a little more than 1%, the actual margin was 2.4%, most polls predicted he would easily win the Electoral College. Of course if the difference went the other way people would claim the some of Obama's votes were stolen.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/us/general_election_romney_vs_obama-1171.html

[Ron Ecker]

Given the reported financial ties of the Romney family to the largest manufacturer of U.S. electronic voting machines, I was sort of expecting a Romney "win." The reports must have been all smoke and no fire.

[Steve Knight]

Or it was a backup contingency they could no longer afford to employ after it became common knowledge Son of Mittless had bought the company....

Curse you, Intawebz!