Presidential pollsters in the US have had some embarrassing failures. Here’s a catalog of those miscalls, from the scholar who literally wrote the book on them.
White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows speaks to reporters about President Trump’s positive coronavirus test outside the White House on Oct. 2, 2020.
Drew Angerer/Getty
President Trump was direct in announcing he had COVID-19. But presidents in the past have been very good at deceiving the public about the state of their health. Which direction will Trump go now?
Five of the six contested presidential elections in U.S. history were resolved and the country moved on – one ended in civil war. What will happen if the upcoming election is contested?
President Donald Trump at the Tulsa campaign rally, where he said he had slowed down COVID-19 testing to keep the numbers low.
Win McNamee/Getty Images
The absence of trust in a nation’s leader and government jeopardizes an effective response to a health crisis. It also creates a political crisis, a loss of faith in democracy.
John F Kennedy’s assassination was a turning point in how conspiracy theorists became viewed.
Host Jack Barry, middle, is flanked by contestants on ‘21,’ a 1950s TV game show.
Orlando Fernandez/New York World-Telegram and Sun/Library of Congress/Wikimedia Commons
Debates may help voters identify which candidate shares their views but they do not help them think critically about those views. That’s because presidential debates don’t live up to their name.
Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley holds a town hall in South Carolina on Aug. 28, 2023.
Peter Zay/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
While other countries set strict limits on the length of campaigns, American presidential races have become drawn-out, yearslong affairs. It wasn’t always this way.
JFK shaking hands with one of the first Peace Corps volunteers in 1961.
P Photo/William J. Smith
No matter how well-intentioned, volunteers who may be inexperienced can’t solve the entrenched and complex social problems low-income communities endure.
As former director of the US Information Agency, Edward R. Murrow, once put it, presidential travel should be treated as a ‘weapon’ to influence popular opinion.
The Mueller report reveals that Trump and his campaign did all kinds of ethically questionable activities to smear Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential election, including asking Russia to hack Clinton’s email. According to Attorney General William Barr, nothing Trump did was illegal.
Reuters/David Becker
Amid all the Mueller report uncertainty, one thing is clear: Donald Trump did some wildly improper things to win the presidency. So did Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, JFK and George W. Bush.
John F. Kennedy’s 1962 speech inspired the modern consumer rights movement.
AP Photo/Bill Allen
JFK pushed consumer rights to the top of the national agenda in 1962, leading to a raft of new laws offering new protections. But without enforcement, such rights are meaningless.
A Facebook ad referenced in the indictment charging Russians in a plot to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
AP/Jon Elswick
Russians have been charged with interfering with the 2016 US presidential election. If true, it’s not an isolated incident. Twice before, foreign powers tried to influence who won the Oval Office.
Sen. Jeff Sessions and Donald Trump on the presidential campaign trail, February 2016.
AP/John Bazemore
President Trump has been criticized for the appointment of political allies as attorney general. But history is filled with examples of AGs who were friends and political supporters of the president.
John F. Kennedy’s assassination shocked the world in the 1960s and arguably played a part in the rise of Donald Trump today.
Abbie Rowe/AAP
The reverberations of JFK’s assassination can still be felt to this day in the paranoid and racialised politics of the American right
Pastors kneel in prayer in front of the Supreme Court, as a counter-protester holds a sign that says “What’s Christian About Discrimination.”
AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin
Arguments on religious freedom have taken place throughout US history and have landed in the Supreme Court as well. Interpretations have changed over time.
The first food stamps program, created amid the Great Depression, lasted four years.
Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum
SNAP and its precursors have weathered plenty of efforts to shrink the safety net. Its decades of bipartisan support make it likely to survive this one.
The immediate aftermath of the shooting of President Kennedy in November 1963.
AP Photo/Mary Ann Moorman