National Affairs: Now and November

"Be not too certain that there will be an election in November 1936," shouted Father Charles E. Coughlin to his alarmed radio audience last month. What he meant was that war might take the place of an election. The political priest might be right or wrong but the fact remained that never before in U. S. history have so many extensive and intensive attempts been made so far in advance to foretell what will happen on Nov. 3.

The speculating public in 1929 was not supplied with a wider assortment of tips on the stockmarket than the assortment of tips on the next election which were last week available to U. S. voters. These tips belong to three general classes, the results of:

1) Surveys made by "trained observers," the century-old method of sending newshawks forth to test political sentiment, report how the country will "go."

2) Straw votes collected on ballots strewn like chaff across the country, a method brought to its full flower only in the last generation.

3) Tests of sentiment by personally questioning relatively small groups chosen with the object of getting a scientifically accurate sample of the voting population, a method whose use in politics is relatively new within the past year.

Aside from dozens of local researches on political trends, the major national reports to date include:

United Press. Sent on a tour from Maine to the Pacific, United Pressman Lyle C. Wilson gave it as his expert opinion that President Roosevelt would not carry any New England state next year, has an even chance from New York to the Mississippi River, is strongest in the West.

New York Times. Sending forth three crack correspondents, Turner Cat- ledge to the South, Russell B. Porter to the Midwest, and James A. Hagerty to New England, the New York Times gave their reports in a series of articles which virtually conceded all New England to the Republicans, all the South, along with Indiana, Iowa and Kansas to Roosevelt. Ohio and Pennsylvania left the Times men in a quandary.

Literary Digest. Greatest straw-vote taker, the Literary Digest, whose polls predicted with considerable accuracy Repeal and the defeat of Hoover, last week reported the tabulation of 987,000 ballots from 41 states. Its question: "Do you NOW approve the acts and policies of the Roosevelt New Deal to date?" Its answers: 41.49%, "Yes"; 58.51, "No."