Predicting the Winner: The Untold Story of Election Night 1952 and the Dawn of Computer Forecasting

by Ira Chinoy

The history of American elections changed profoundly on the night of November 4, 1952. An out-of-the-box approach to predicting winners from early returns with new tools—computers—was launched live and untested on the newest medium for television. Like exhibits in a freak show, computers were referred to as “electronic brains” and “mechanical monsters.”

Yet this innovation would help fuel an obsession with numbers as a way of understanding and shaping politics. It would engender controversy down to our own time. And it would herald a future in which the public square would go digital. The gamble was fueled by a crisis of credibility stemming from faulty election-night forecasts four years earlier, in 1948, combined with a lackluster presentation of returns. What transpired in 1952 is a complex tale of responses to innovation, which Ira Chinoy makes understandable via a surprising history of election nights as venues for rolling out new technologies, refining methods of prediction, and providing opportunities for news organizations to shine.

In Predicting the Winner , Chinoy tells in detail for the first time the story of the 1952 election night—a night with continuing implications for the way forward from the dramatic events of 2020–2021 and for future election nights in the United States.
 

Genres: History

384 pages, Hardcover

Published May 1, 2024

Reviews

[Caroline Yun · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my favorite book that I’ve read this year! It is about a seemingly niche matter that is also pervasive and extremely relevant - the inescapable bond among an ever evolving media landscape, continual advancement of technology, and increasingly contentious elections.

I also appreciated the cautiously optimistic and realistically hopeful outlook rather than a negative and angry one. To acknowledge and embrace inevitable change is the best way to move forward, progress, grow, improve. (I’m definitely oversimplifying this incredibly well-written and thoroughly researched book…I highly recommend just reading it :))

[Ira Chinoy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wrote this book, so how can I not like it :-) I hope you like it, too. But don’t just take my word. Here’s what Harvard historian and New Yorker writer Jill Lepore had to say about it: “In Predicting the Winner, Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative-journalist-turned-historian Ira Chinoy tells the hair-raising story of the first widely televised U.S. presidential election, in 1952. But it wasn’t only televised. It was computerized. With predictions made by robots and whirring, blinking, flashing machines. Based on stunning archival research, the tale offers a vital parable for our times.”

[Daniel M. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ira's story about using computers to forecast the outcome of the 1952 election is full of surprises and unlikely serendipity. It's also a story about how an industry (news) pivots slowly and cautiously to using new technology to portray what's going on in the electorate while also coming to grips with the many forces in play at the time. Masterfully told, the book touches on how the old guard comes to understand the newest tech while still reporting in the old ways with the same old guys as their vanguard. As a result, "Predicting the Winner" is more than just another new-tech-hits-an-old-business story, but also touches on the social changes that are afoot.

The tale is incredibly relevant to our current presidential race (2024) as unpredicted events swamp the expected narrative, making polling data and projections once again a thing of uncertainty. One of the key events of the book is how the projected results were difficult to believe and how that influenced the way the election story was told. Sound familiar?

Put this on your must-read list as we zoom into election season. Understanding the history of election counting, polls, experts, and projections is incredibly useful thing to do. This book will make you wiser about such things.

[Chris Hannas · Rating 5 out of 5]

A detailed account of a moment in history I knew nothing about but found fascinating to follow. Illuminating in the author's extensive research and connection to modern day journalism's role in society. Anyone interested in journalism, elections, politics or U.S. history will surely enjoy this book!

[Tina Panik · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reviewed for Library Journal; full review appears there.