Cover of the 19 February 1921 edition of The Literary Digest. |
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| Founder | Isaac Kaufmann Funk |
|---|---|
| First issue | 1890 |
| Final issue | 1938 |
| Company | Funk & Wagnalls |
| Country | United States |
| Based in | New York City |
| Language | English |
The Literary Digest was an influential general interest weekly magazine published by Funk & Wagnalls. Founded by Isaac Kaufmann Funk in 1890, it eventually merged with two similar weekly magazines, Public Opinion and Current Opinion.
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Beginning with early issues, the emphasis was on opinion articles and an analysis of news events. Established as a weekly newsmagazine, it offered condensations of articles from American, Canadian and European publications. Type-only covers gave way to illustrated covers during the early 1900s. After Isaac Funk's death in 1912, Robert Joseph Cuddihy became the editor.[1] In the 1920s, the covers carried full-color reproductions of famous paintings. By 1927, The Literary Digest climbed to a circulation of over one million. Covers of the final issues displayed various photographic and photo-montage techniques. In 1938, it merged with the Review of Reviews, only to fail soon after. Its subscriber list was bought by Time.[1]
A column in the Digest, known as "The Lexicographer's Easy Chair", was produced by Frank Horace Vizetelly.[2]
The Literary Digest is almost certainly best-remembered today for the circumstances surrounding its demise. It conducted a "straw poll" regarding the likely outcome of the 1936 presidential election. The poll showed that the Republican governor of Kansas, Alf Landon, would likely be the overwhelming winner.[3] This seemed possible to some, as the Republicans had fared well in Maine, where the congressional and gubernatorial elections were then held in September - as opposed to the rest of the nation, where these elections were held in November along with the presidential election, like today. This seemed especially likely in light of the conventional wisdom, "As Maine goes, so goes the nation", a truism coined because Maine was regarded as a "bellwether" state which usually supported the winning candidate's party.
In November, Landon carried only Vermont and Maine; U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt carried the 46 other states; Landon's electoral vote total of eight is a tie for the record low for a major-party nominee since the current U.S. two-party system began in the 1850s. The Democrats joked, "As goes Maine, so goes Vermont," and the magazine was completely discredited because of the poll and was soon discontinued.
In retrospect, the polling techniques employed by the magazine were to blame. Although it had polled 10 million individuals (only about 2.4 million of these individuals responded, an astronomical sum for any survey),[4] it had surveyed firstly its own readers, a group with disposable incomes well above the national average of the time (shown in part by their ability still to afford a magazine subscription during the depths of the Great Depression). The magazine also used two other readily available lists: that of registered automobile owners and that of telephone users. While such lists might come close to providing a statistically-accurate cross-section of Americans today, this assumption was manifestly untrue in the 1930s. Both groups had incomes well above the national average of the day, which resulted in lists of voters far more likely to support Republicans than a truly typical voter of the time.
In addition, although 2.4 million responses is an astronomical number, it is only 24% of those surveyed, and the low response rate to the poll is probably a factor in the debacle. It is error to assume that the responders and the non-responders had the same views and merely extrapolate the former on to the latter. Further, as subsequent statisical analysis and study have shown, it is not necessary to poll 10 million people when conducting a scientific survey. A much lesser number (e.g. 1,500 persons) if appropriately chosen is adequate in most cases.
George Gallup's American Institute of Public Opinion achieved national recognition by correctly predicting the result of the election, and for correctly predicting the results of the Literary Digest poll to within about 1%, using a smaller sample size of 50,000.[4]
This debacle led to a considerable refinement of public opinion polling techniques and was largely regarded as spurring the beginning of the era of modern scientific public opinion research.