The Literary Digest

The Literary Digest was a popular American magazine founded in 1890, known for its coverage of literature, arts, and cultural topics. It gained fame for its polls predicting election outcomes, notably inaccurately forecasting the winner of the 1936 presidential election. This failure was due to its reliance on a selective and biased sample of respondents, highlighting the importance of proper statistical methods. The magazine ceased publication in 1938, but its legacy serves as a cautionary tale in polling and survey methodology, emphasizing the need for representative sampling to obtain accurate results.