The 1936 Literary Digest poll was off by 38 percentage points

George Gallup was off by 12. Think about that next time you see an election poll miss an outcome.

This is a quick post for posterity’s sake.

I have been traveling every couple of weeks since July to promote my book in some sort of event: academic talks, public speeches, panel appearances — you get the picture. It’s in the nature of book promotion that I give roughly the same presentation each time. I pull some numbers and tell some stories about how …