⑪ Wrong Polls

The final pre-election Gallup poll -- taken in mid-October -- became public the day before the election itself, giving Dewey a solid lead of 49.5 percent to Truman's 44.5 percent of the total vote.

The Truman winning caused pollsters like Gallup, Roper, and Crossley, to investigate where they went wrong. Columnists, reporters, and editorial writers blamed themselves for relying too much on the polls. Marquis Childs, a columnist, wrote,

“We were wrong, all of us, completely and entirely, the commentators, the political editors, the politicians-except for Harry S. Truman, and no one believed him. The fatal flaw was the reliance on the public opinion polls.”