They could’ve been contenders
It’s kind of silly to think, but just about every presidential nominee for the opposing major party was seriously given a shot to win the thing.
It’s bizarre to think about, but moving into the 1936 election, this was what the “chattering classes” were working with:
The Literary Digest poll indicated that the majority of the people were opposed to the New Deal. The National Association of Manufacturers, the national Chamber of Commerce, and that supposedly influential association of the wealthy, the American Liberty League, stood opposed to the admiriistration. According to a Du Pont Company statistician, the President’s family life was considered offensive by large numbers of Americans, as was the sharpness and” amorality” of his advisers; the New Deal waemployed had not received jobs despite Roosevelt’s promises. Moreover, the statistician said, women did not like the abandonment of prohibition without safeguards for the young, and the majority of adults were beginning to tire of Roosevelt’s affected voice and manners.
And, of course, the nation’s most respected pollster predicted that Al Landon would defeat Franklin Roosevelt handily. As it turns out, Al Landon did in fact win big amongst that sector in the population who owned phones or automobiles, which was was where the Literary Digest got their registery of voters from.
Here the geniuses are, reporting their poll results.
Literary Digest went out of the polling business after that. Gallup, which managed to predict that Roosevelt would win — though their results still look absurdly pro-Landon — became the new most respected polling outfit.
Twelve year later, Gallup would botch the Harry Truman – Thomas Dewey result. They quit polling two weeks before the election. Harry Truman’s entire campaign was uphill in the polls, so they just failed to notice the late Harry Truman surge, and assumed from their very first poll result between Truman and Dewey that the election would end that way.
The publisher of Literary Digest would laugh at Gallup, because it was the only opportunity he had to laugh.
Abraham Lincoln was never a sure bet in his re-election bid — in his nomination or in the actual election. Franklin D. Roosevelt was not a sure bet against Thomas Dewey in 1944.
Those are the classic examples of “not jumping horses in mid-stream”, something that Americans have a proud history of doing. (wait a minute and it’ll jump you to the right entry… July 30th.)
Some polling snapshots shown here.
Carter was ahead of Reagan on Labor Day, though the fact that he was pretty far below the “50” threshold fortells his doomed situation. But, the editorials all reported a close race. The candidates who came closest to “pulling a Truman”: Gerald Ford and Hubert Humphrey… 12 and 11 points down, probably the paper trail from those campaigns held those campaigns to be doomed. The two candidates who tried to claim that mantle, but looked ridiculous doing so: George Bush and Bob Dole… theoretically, if a couple of things had gone right for those candidates, one of them might have won. (In Bush I’s case, things went right for him in 1988: he faced Michael Dukakis!)
McGovern, Mondale, Goldwater, and Dole (though Dole was in at least a position to be humoured) never really had a chance. Perhaps a better candidate would have pulled something off a more respectable showing. For example, it’s a testamont to the pure cynicism of the Democratic Party Hierarchy that they pulled Mondale to victory over Gary Hart in the nomination battle… Gary Hart would’ve still lost, but it would at least have not been so goddamned embarrassing… a candidate that doesn’t even have the noble purpose of Goldwater and McGovern facing their same electoral fate… which is something of a double whammy.