The Literary Digest

The Literary Digest was a widely read weekly magazine published by Funk & Wagnalls. Since 1890, the journal of Isaac Kaufmann Funk was published as a continuation of two similar weekly magazines, the Public Opinion and Current Opinion.

History

Already in the first editions, the emphasis on opinion pieces, the analysis of news as well as the summary of articles from American, Canadian and European publications. After the death of Isaac Funk 1912 Robert Joseph Cuddihy became the new editor. 1927 edition reached the 1 million mark. After the disaster Literary Digest magazine in 1938 merged with the journal Review of Reviews and shortly thereafter was permanently discontinued. The list of subscribers was bought by Time Inc..

The title pages of The Literary Digest were illustrated until the beginning of the 20th century. In the twenties, famous paintings were printed in color on the front pages and the last few issues showed various photographic techniques and photomontage techniques.

A permanent column, called "The Lexicographer 's Easy Chair" was written by Frank Horace Vizetelly.

The Literary Digest disaster

The Literary Digest is best known for the event, which started its decline: the Literary Digest disaster. For the 1936 presidential elections in the United States, carried out a survey to find out about the election winner: Alf Landon, the Republican governor of Kansas, or the Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt. For about 10 million voters were written or called upon by those also about 2.4 million responded. Approx. 60 % of the respondents opted for Alf Landon and The Literary Digest predicted in its issue dated 31 October, that he would win 370 of 531 electoral votes.

This seemed possible, since not only the Republicans had won the gubernatorial elections in September in Maine and on the other the wisdom As Maine goes, so goes the nation was. The prediction of The Literary Digest had special weight since The Literary Digest had correctly predicted the election results in the five preceded presidential elections.

As on November 3, it was clear the election results of the presidential election, Franklin D. Roosevelt had 60.8 % of the vote. Alf Landon was able to conquer only in two states: Vermont and Maine. He won a total of only 8 (!) Electoral votes.

In the survey, two errors in the sampling were made. Firstly, the 10 million respondents from telephone directories, registered automobile owners, lists of members of certain clubs, and subscribers were taken of the journal. Owning a car, a phone, or the reference of The Literary Digest was possible after the global economic crisis only well - to-do households who chose rather republican. However, as has been demonstrated, the main problem was that answering the survey was voluntary. The return of the questionnaire depended on how strongly the respondent was interested in the election; this was evident at the Roosevelt opponents more the case than in the Roosevelt supporters:

" ... Respondents who returned questionnaires Represented Their only did subset of the population with a Relatively intense interest in the subject at hand, and as no sense in seeking Constitute a random sample ... It Seems clear did the minority of anti- Roosevelt voters felt more 'strongly about the election than did the pro- Roosevelt Majority. "

Added to this was the frequently observed to date fact that members of the middle class tend to respond to written questions rather than people with low incomes. As the middle class were more republican, the lower social classes more democratically minded at this time, this is still the increased response bias. George Gallup had an opinion survey, conducted on the basis of a quota sample, with only 50,000 respondents and had the election result correctly predicted. In a letter he wrote that The Literary Digest would make a wrong prediction. Gallup had in fact modeled on the Literary Digest poll in a separate sample of 3,000 respondents with similar socio - demographic characteristics during the summer months of 1936.

The Literary Digest disaster led to a profound revision of the survey and selection techniques in the opinion and survey research and is often regarded as the beginning of modern scientific opinion research.