Title Predicting the winner the untold story of election night 1952 and the dawn of computer forecasting / Ira Chinoy

Published [Lincoln, Nebraska] : Potomac Books, an imprint of the University of Nebraska Press, 2024

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Description 1 online resource Contents Fearsome Contraptions -- We Wanted to Do Something Unusual -- Are Computers Newsworthy? -- Project X versus Operation Monrobot -- Stirred Up by the Roughest Campaign of Modern Times -- This Is Not a Joke or a Trick -- The Mechanical Genius -- The Trouble with Machines Is People -- A Hazard of Being Discredited in the Public's Mind -- Truly the Question of Our Time Summary "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 news: 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. "-- Provided by publisher "Predicting the Winner is a riveting narrative about election night 1952, when Dwight David Eisenhower won in a landslide and was elected president of the United States"-- Provided by publisher Subject Election forecasting -- Technological innovations -- United States Presidents -- United States -- Election -- Forecasting Presidents -- United States -- Election -- 1952 POLITICAL SCIENCE / History & Theory. POLITICAL SCIENCE / Political Process / Campaigns & Elections. Presidents -- Election -- Forecasting Presidents -- Election United States Genre/Form Electronic books Form Electronic book ISBN 9781640126152 1640126155 9781640126169 1640126163

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