Take Back Your Government! Page 19

  If appropriate, you should then add, "The question is not appropriate to the campaign, since the office Mr. Upright has consented to let us run him for is one which cannot possibly deal with the matter you have raised. However, Mr. Upright believes that the voters should be permitted to know all about him, even the brand of his tooth paste, if you are interested. Therefore I am sure that he will take time out, busy as he is, to look into the matter you are interested in and express an opinion."

  If Mr. Upright is the speaker, he must answer, in some fashion. If it is pertinent to his candidacy, he should not straddle. Even if it's as hot as a baked potato, he should answer and a forthright answer will gain respect and lose no more votes than a straddle. If it is not pertinent it is quite likely that he does not know all the details; he may ask the speaker to meet with him, making a set date from the platform, for the purpose of digging into the matter. At the private meeting he may still insist on time for research and study, since he is not bound to accept the heckler's assertions as Gospel.

  I want to make a subtle but, I believe, proper distinction between dishonest fence-straddling and reasonable prudence in avoiding unnecessary and irrelevant controversy.

  There are so many different ways in which men may hold honest differences of opinion that it is possible to find reasons for like-minded, dose Mends to quarrel if an effort is made to determine the issues on which they differ. This truth is the basis of much shoddy politics- the injection of the extraneous and unnecessary issue. Do you think it is decent or indecent for the women of Bali to run around naked to the waist? Whatever your opinion, will it affect the fashion in which you perform the duties of county tax collector? Is it just to ask yourself to commit yourself in public on this issue?

  On the other hand the matter may be very pertinent if you are seeking an appointment to the state board of motion picture censors.

  There are many issues on which people are strongly divided in opinion, not necessarily along party lines, such things as prohibition, admittance of refugees, birth control, vivisection, capital punishment, public ownership, the UN, conscription, compulsory arbitration, legalized gambling, and so forth literally without end. It makes a lot of difference in these matters whether you are running for legislator, county clerk, congress, justice of the peace, supervisor of education, sheriff, or tax assessor, whether these matters are legitimate criteria of your qualifications.

  Since a majority of one - yourself- holds all of your views, I think you may legitimately avoid any issue which is quite irrelevant to the duties you will be called on to perform. But don't kid yourself nor let any candidate of yours kid himself; the duties of any lawmaker, judge, or chief executive are extremely broad; the duties of some other offices are quite narrow.

  How to Sample a District: Mr. Upright's campaign for the nomination has reached the last month. You have worked hard but how well, in fact, are you doing? Should you put on more steam, or fold up and quit the race?

  You can't afford the services of the Gallup poll or other professionals; your volunteers can't spare the time from direct campaigning. To be sure, they are giving you a poll of sorts, at each meeting of the Doorbell Club, but what you want now is a check on their reports. You know from experience that the reports of the field workers are usually too rosy.

  There is a technique which must be learned by experience but which you may start learning as soon as you enter politics; by the time you reach a place where it matters you can be quite skilled. It consists of making predictions for all candidates and issues on the ballot for each election, both before and after some direct sampling of your own, and keeping a record of the results, which you will then compare with the election returns.

  From this you will learn whether you are too optimistic or too pessimistic; subconsciously you will improve your judgment until you reach a point where you can go out into a district and almost smell a victory or a defeat weeks ahead of the event. When you can do this you are in a position to turn a potential defeat into a victory.

  Make your predictions at regular intervals, from filing date to the night before the election. File them away, then get them out during the post-mortem. The whole procedure is much more entertaining than cross-word puzzles; addicts prefer it to trying to pick the horses, or to reading detective stories.

  Statistical Sampling: Even if you could afford professional poll-taking, supervised by mathematical statisticians, the money is better spent on campaigning. Does this mean you have to go it blind, perhaps to work your head off for a lost cause, or lose by a narrow margin when a small additional effort would have won -had you known it was necessary?

  No, there is a fairly easy and inexpensive way to conduct a poll on a district of any size, even the largest, which will give you reliable data on which to judge how well your campaign is going and then to plan accordingly.

  The secret of correct prophecy by statistical sampling of a large number of units lies first in the correctness of the methods by which you sample and second in not trying to get out of the figures more than there is in them.

  The mathematical theories of probability, chance, and probable error are complicated and abstruse. Instead of trying to give a course in this subject I shall content myself with stating a thumb rule, giving some instructions on how to use the rule, and offering a few general comments on the mathematical methods whereby the rule was derived. Only the thumb rule need be remembered to apply die method successfully; the mathematical comments are for the mathematically-minded reader who may wish to check the derivation of the rule and, possibly, enter into a litde stimulating controversy with the writer as to dieory, or as to the possibility of formulating a better thumb rule for the purpose.

  Rule: Poll your district at "random" (identified below) until you have fifty responsive answers - answers either for you or against you, disregarding those who refuse to answer or haven't made up their minds. Take die number of answersybr your candidate and double it. Subtract eight. Mark your answer as a percentage. The chances are about four-to-one that your candidate would not receive less than this percentage of die vote cast if the election were held at once and diere is a practical certainty that he would not fall very far under this figure. Use it as if it were a certainty. It is, in fact, a carefully calculated conservative estimate on die "better-be-safe-dian-sorry" principle.

  Example: You have taken a poll of 93 voters of your party, selected at random, before you attain 50 responses-14 declined to answer, 29 had made no choice. Of the 50, 28 were for Upright; 22 were for Hopeful. Doubling 28 gives you 56; subtracting 8 leaves 48: Upright may expect to get not less dian 48% of die vote cast if die election were held at once. It is equally true diat he might get as high as 56 plus eight or 64% of the vote, but you are not interested in the optimistic side of the picture; you want to know what you have to achieve to cinch die election - dierefore you use 48% as your figure.

  Forty-eight percent is not enough; if he loses by 2% he loses-it's an emergency.

  Two percent of the expected vote of 25,000 is 500 votes; you must speed up the campaign to get at least 500 more votes dian your present activity insures - so you shoot for about three times that number. You call an emergency meeting of die Doorbell Club and show diem only die 48% figure and tell diem that means diat each one will have to dig out about six more new votes dian he had counted on, by punching additional doorbells not on the selected list until he finds six more who can be wheedled into voting in the primary. You put Upright on a 60-hour week for die balance of die campaign and you decide to spend four afternoons a week at doorbell-pushing yourself, instead of two, even diough it means doing your paperwork on midnight oil.

  The spurt lasts three weeks but it wins for you - when you might have lost by a heart-breakingly small margin. Perhaps you win by a fat margin and perhaps the spurt was not really necessary - you will never know but it does not matter; you've won.

  Suppose your poll shows a conservative estimate of more than 50%; you are then justified
in continuing your present campaign plans, without an emergency spurt but without slackening off.

  Suppose the poll had been the other way around, 22 for Upright; 28 for Hopeful - your conservative estimate is then 36%. Does this mean you should quit? No, for Hopeful's conservative estimate is still less than 50%. It means a tough fight with a possibility, but not much probability, of winning. Stick with it.

  Suppose Hopeful got 30 votes in the poll, indicating that he will probably beat your man by at least 52% of the vote and that he might take as high as 68% of the total. Should you throw in the sponge?

  Not on your own initiative - I recommend that you talk it over with your candidate, then call a closed meeting of all workers and all money contributors, tell them the sad news and ask them to express their wishes. From a cold-blooded standpoint you might as well cut your losses and quit... but I predict that they will vote to stick to the finish and turn the meeting into a rally. They may even win for you. Politics isn't dice, nor statistical physics; the Spirit of the Alamo may outweigh all measurable factors.

  If they decide to stick, bow to their will and pitch in. It will be a treasured emotional experience at least - and many a "lost" campaign has planted the seed for an eventual political upheaval.

  The Meaning of "Random": A "random" sample is one which is as truly representative of the district as you can make it. This is most easily done by trying to keep out the personal element in the selections. For example - you want 100 names from 200 precincts: Take the bottom name, of your party, from the second column of each-even numbered precinct list. Or make up any other rule which makes the selection mechanical, with no choice on the part of the operator, and which spreads the sample evenly through the district, according to population, not area.

  Never take the sample all from one precinct or one area. If you are polling by telephone you will find that some of your choices do not have telephones. Do not substitute the next name having a telephone listing; the voters without telephones must be polled at their homes - otherwise you will introduce an economic factor which will falsify your answer.

  Polling by telephone is best done in the evenings, in order to find both men and women at home. Do not accept the response of a spouse in place of the voter named by the random choice; it will change your results... there is a definite tendency for women to vote more conservatively, and in other ways differently, than do men.

  Do not let the polling question suggest the answer desired. For example, here is a suitable phraseology for a telephone poll: "Good evening, is this Mrs. Mabel Smith? Mrs. Smith, this is the civic affairs research bureau speaking. Have you formed an opinion about the congressional candidates who will appear on your primary ballot a week from next Tuesday?"

  It should be possible for one worker to prepare a list for a telephone poll in one evening and get fifty responsive answers in not more than three evenings. A reply-postal card poll should take about the same length of time to prepare and is about as accurate, but it takes longer to get the results and 250 should be the minimum sent out. It may be cheaper than telephoning in districts involving long-distance tolls. (These reply-type postal cards, at two cents apiece, are invaluable in penny-pinching political work.)

  Don't attempt to make a straw-vote canvas door-to-door. Don't try it on the street. The names mud be pre-selected by some non-personal method. Mathematical Basis f or the Rule-of-Eight: (Skip this, if you like.) In any statistical sampling the larger the sample, the smaller the errors in the result, except for systematic errors - errors which are inherent in the thing being sampled. In the opinion of this writer, the systematic errors in any poll of political opinion conducted without expert actuarial help are so large that it is not worth while to use a sample larger than 100. On the other hand the "probable errors" - errors which depend on the laws of chance - are so large for samples less than 50 that trends will be masked by the inescapable "probable errors." For efficient use of time and money the smallest sample which will spot a trend is desired. For that reason, and because percentages may be obtained from a 50-sample simply by doubling (percentage problems are troublesome to some), a sample of 50 has been recommended.

  Bessel's formula for probable error has been used in computing the rule-of-eight, assuming independent events of equal probability and assuming a "universe" of very large but limited numbers. The assumption of equal probability may be attacked; the pragmatic justification lies in the fact that probable errors are largest in a 50-50 division and the political situation is most critical in such a situation - a landslide either way will show in a sample of 50 without resort to probable error. The rule-of-eight is neither the "probable error"of the engineer, nor the three-standard-deviations-equals-standard-certainty of the professional statistician; the first was rejected as too esoteric in meaning for the layman, the second was rejected because trend-spotting with it requires samples too large for the volunteer political campaign. A selected error of 8% was chosen to produce a conservative probability of about four-to-one, which was considered accurate enough for the purpose and much more reliable than most data we plan our lives by - in choosing a wife, for example!

  If greater accuracy can be afforded, use a sample of 100 and a rule-of-five. Or the mathematical reader may perform his own analysis, following Peters or Bessel or others; I can't recommend direct analysis using the binomial expansion without pre-computa-tion, even using Pascal's triangle - the figures are incredibly astronomical!

  Sampling by "Smell": In addition to poll-taking and making predictions, try this-in time you will acquire skill in it: Prowl through your district Buy a Coke and chat with your druggist. Buy two gallons of gas-chin with the man at the pumps. Ask strangers for matches, then gossip. Get a haircut. Make a purchase in an uncrowded grocery. Ask passing strangers for information-then talk.

  When you have done this you will combine it subconsciously with the doorbell punching you have done (which, for the manager, should be scattered through the district) and you will end up with a curious feeling way down inside. Drag it up and into the light, take a look at it, and see whether or not it tells you that your man is going to win.

  The human mind, when trained, is capable of more rapid, more flexible, and more reliable evaluations of problems containing unlimited unknowns than any of the mechanisms as yet invented. In time you will acquire this talent; you will know it when your predictions are consistently correct, not only as to results but as to approximate majorities and size of vote cast.

  The acquisition of the talent is painless and almost effortless.

  While acquiring the talent don't let yourself be panicked by some phony figures. Amateurs are inclined to think that their strenuous efforts must be producing a tidal wave, then are disappointed when they go out on a "sniffing" tour and find hardly a ripple. That is normal; primary campaigns hardly ever stir the general public out of their sleep. All you need is a ripple, of the right size, and in the right place. You know it is in the right place for you have been using the direct vote-getting methods; now you want to know if it is the right size.

  Your district has about 200,000 adults. You question only adults. Mr. Upright needs 15,000 votes. If one out of four of the people you meet casually has even heard of your man, he is a cinch for the nomination; but if it is late in the campaign and only one in ten seems to know that he is alive, you had better get a hustle on and see to it that your election day organization gets every certain and every probable vote to the polls-or you're licked! You can still squeeze through on the one-to-ten ratio by hard work just before and on election day, but it won't be easy no matter what the telephone poll said.

  Chapter X

  How to Win an Election (conclusion)

  The Final Sprint

  Last Week Mail Coverage: Your candidate has called on more than 3,000 people, possibly as many as 5,000. (Fantastic? I once rang 8,000 doorbells under similar circumstances.) Your precinct workers and you yourself have worked on the rest of the 25,000 targets. (You did not have ti
me, you yourself? My dear lady - or sir - you must have time. I suggest a firm date for Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, one to five. Accept no other engagements for those hours.)

  The campaign has not been perfect, but 20,000 aimed shots have been fired, in addition to the shotgun spread of publicity and meetings. However many of these shots were fired weeks ago; you need to use last minute reminders.

  I suggest the use of either penny postal cards or personal letters - nothing in between. The usual political advertising, sent third class in an unsealed envelope and addressed by stenciling, then stuffed till the envelope bulges with wordy printed matter, has a way of landing in waste baskets unread.

  A post card will be read because it is short, and it stands a chance of being kept around for a few days as a reminder. A personal letter of any sort, sent first class, will be read and noticed.

  Even for postal cards your postage alone will be $200, plus printing costs and the (volunteer) effort of addressing and signing-all cards should be signed by someone, even if with an "authorized" signature, not marked as such. The signing and addressing take many hours and the work will need to be done long before the mailing date.

  The final mail coverage will be the largest single expense in your campaign and may be one-third of your total campaign expenses. You may be forced to use postals, rather than letters, to save time and expense, but I suggest that you consider personal letters for the persons the candidate called on, as these are your prize prospects.

  ("Five thousand personal notes? It would take a crack typist four months to do such a job!" So it would-)

  A man named Hooven invented a sort of player-piano typewriter which types any given copy over and over again, using a standard typewriter. The pseudo-player-piano roll can have signals cut in it which stops the typing and permits a human typist to insert a name, a date, a phrase, or any other variation in the copy, without disturbing the set-up. There is no way to tell a Hooven-typed letter from one typed entirely by hand.