The Literary Digest, June 7, 1930. With and similar items

The Literary Digest was an influential American general interest weekly magazine published by Funk Wagnalls. Founded by Isaac Kaufmann Funk in 1890, it eventually merged with two similar weekly magazines, Public Opinion and Current Opinion. History: Beginning with early issues, the emphasis was on opinion articles and an analysis of news events. Established as a weekly newsmagazine, it offered condensations of articles from American, Canadian and European publications. Type-only covers gave way to illustrated covers during the early 1900s. After Isaac Funk's death in 1912, Robert Joseph Cuddihy became the editor.[1] In the 1920s, the covers carried full-color reproductions of famous paintings. By 1927, The Literary Digest climbed to a circulation of over one million. Covers of the final issues displayed various photographic and photo-montage techniques. In 1938, it merged with the Review of Reviews, only to fail soon after. Its subscriber list was bought by Time. A column in The Digest, known as "The Lexicographer's Easy Chair", was produced by Frank Horace Vizetelly. Ewing Galloway was assistant editor at the publication. The Literary Digest is best-remembered today for the circumstances surrounding its demise. From 1916, it conducted a poll regarding the likely outcome of the quadrennial presidential election. Prior to the 1936 election, the poll had always correctly predicted the winner. In 1936, the poll concluded that the Republican candidate, Governor Alfred Landon of Kansas, was likely to be the overwhelming winner against incumbent President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In November, Roosevelt won the election in an unprecedented landslide, winning every state except Maine and Vermont while also winning the popular vote by 24.26%. The magnitude of the magazine's error - 19.54% for the popular vote for Roosevelt v Landon, and even more in some states - destroyed the magazine's credibility, and it folded within 18 months of the election.