In the 1936 Presidential Election Franklin D. Rooseveltdefeated Alfred E. Landon

In the 1936 Presidential Election Franklin D. Rooseveltdefeated Alfred E. Landon in a landslide vote. A Landon victory hadbeen predicted by the Literary Digest a magazine that ran theoldest largest and most widely publicized of the polls at thetime. The Digests final prediction was based on 10 million sampleballots mailed to prospective voters and 2.3 million werereturned. The sample of voters was drawn from lists of automobileand telephone owners. Despite the massive size of this sample itfailed to predict a Roosevelt victory being off the mark by 19percentage points. The Digest was wrong becauseA. the sample size although large was not large enoughB. the right research questions were not askedC. respondents intentionally lied about their preferredcandidateD. the sample used was not representative of the actual populationat the time