In response to national pollsters’ failure in forecasting election outcomes in 1948 and 1952, The New York Times pursued in 1956 a weekslong, multistate exercise in on-the-ground reporting to assess public opinion about the presidential race.
The Times’ experiment, which these days would be recognized as “shoe-leather reporting,” included two dozen journalists assigned to four teams that, in all, traveled to 27 battleground states over several weeks before the election – a rematch between President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a Republican, and his Democratic rival, Adlai E. Stevenson.
