Polls before the telephone?

[A18]

Did John Q. Adams have any clue, for example, that Andrew Jackson was going to beat him before the actual election results came in?

[jimrtex]

Did John Q. Adams have any clue, for example, that Andrew Jackson was going to beat him before the actual election results came in?

I think that the 1824 election was conducted more like a party nominating process than a final election.   All the candidates were from the same party.  There were electors who voted for Adams for President and Jackson for Vice President, and of course Calhoun was overwhelmingly elected Vice President.   Jackson got a majority of the EV from two states where he was beaten in the popular vote.

It was probably a reconstruction after the fact to make a big deal about the popular vote, since Jackson believed that Clay did him in in the House.

[J. J.]

The earliest I've heard of were in the 1920's.  They used a real live human to go out and ask registered voters questions.

[Redefeatbush04]

Even if they did have polls, they were probablly unreliable as hell

[ATFFL]

An early form of polling, started at about WWI, invovled mailing a huge number of polls out to "randomly" selected people, who would then decide if they wanted to respond or not.  These were done by magazines.  Ever ballot also had a card to subscribe to the magazine. 

They were wildly popular and surprisingly accurate.

Then, in 1936, it blew up on the Literary Digest when they chose their sample primarily from a list of automobile owners and private telephone owners.  This heavily sampled teh wealthy, a demographic that heavily opposed Roosevelt.

[CARLHAYDEN]

An early form of polling, started at about WWI, invovled mailing a huge number of polls out to "randomly" selected people, who would then decide if they wanted to respond or not.  These were done by magazines.  Ever ballot also had a card to subscribe to the magazine. 

They were wildly popular and surprisingly accurate.

Then, in 1936, it blew up on the Literary Digest when they chose their sample primarily from a list of automobile owners and private telephone owners.  This heavily sampled teh wealthy, a demographic that heavily opposed Roosevelt.

1936 was the first major election for Gallup.

His organization had people actually go to voters homes for nearly forty years.

Costs became prohibitive.