Dear Editor
DEAR EDITOR The New Leader welcomes comment and criticism on any of its features, but letters should not exceed 300 wvords. THE POLLSTERS I read with great interest the article by John Day...
...We select our candidates today with less care than a business selects its newest recruit...
...New York City Elmo Roper It is not entirely fair to interpret what a writer is trying to say, but in reading John Day's piece about polls I cannot escape the conclusion that he is far more concerned about the faulty procedures by which candidates are selected and elected than he is about the possible influence of polls on the election process...
...Only a few years ago many people were worried about Madison Avenue and its hidden persuaders...
...Leaders are not so easily identified...
...My only criticism of the article is that the quick reader might get the impression that Day was leveling his charge against all pollsters and regarded the various pollsters as being for all practical purposes interchangeable...
...And because participation in politics has been downgraded, few top-flight leaders are willing to leave their callings and risk their reputations in the field of politics...
...THE POLLSTERS I read with great interest the article by John Day entitled "Do the Pollsters Control Your Vote...
...Voters can study candidate qualifications more carefully...
...Princeton, NJ...
...The hidden persuaders were strictly bogey-men...
...The primary system, which many students thought would be an improvement, has not turned out that way...
...In this process of selecting and electing candidates, polls and surveys play a pretty unimportant part—and the part they do play, in my opinion, is definitely wholesome...
...But all of this shouldn't divert our attention from one of the great problems which this democracy has, the problem of finding a better way to identify our ablest leaders and to induce them to run for office...
...Georce Gallup...
...I need only to remind Day that a decade ago there was genuine fear that television might corrupt the election process...
...Polls make it far more difficult for candidates to be selected in "smoke-filled rooms" by the political bosses...
...In the early days of the country it was taken for granted that the best men with the best minds would take an active part in government...
...For a long time I have shared many of the worries which he expresses—worries about the possible ill effects on our democracy brought about by the misuse of polls...
...In the decades since, the nation has multiplied many times in population and three or four times in size...
...And there is much criticism of the present convention system...
...The public is alerted much earlier than it used to be about candidates and coming elections...
...It was held that only the "TV glamor boys" would have a chance...
...And, in fact, I believe it is generally accepted that television is and can be a constructive factor...
...This fear has largely been dispelled...
...I too have been quite upset about what seems to me to be the questionable use of privately done political polls for candidates...
...Those who study poll data know that Madison Avenue's efforts in recent Presidential elections have had no measurable effect on the vote—at least an effect that can be measured by present day survey methods...
...Congratulations to John Day on a job well done...
...The party system, and along with it the spoils system, are deeply entrenched...
...Let me hasten to say that I think candidates have a perfect right to have surveys done, but in my opinion, they have no right to leak selected portions to the press for the purpose of influencing the vote...
...There are, I assure you, differences...
...NL, August 29) and I think he's done a very good job...
Vol. 43 • September 1960 • No. 37
