POLITICAL EYE: Lesson of ’48: Don’t trust polls or pundits

Some methods for measuring political popularity are more unusual than others.

Take the 1948 upset re-election victory of President Harry Truman over Thomas Dewey.

Few saw that coming, except maybe the people buying chicken feed from a Kansas City supplier.

The Staley Milling Company let farmers register their preference for Truman or Dewey by buying sacks of feed marked with either a donkey for Democrat or an elephant for Republican. After 20,000 farmers had been polled that way in six Midwest states, the company called off the survey, saying it didn't believe the results: 54 percent preferred Truman to Dewey.

"We read the Gallup and Roper polls that were all for Dewey, and we decided that our results were too improbable," one company official said, according to a 1968 article in American Heritage magazine.

Ted Jelen, a political science professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, referred to the infamous 1948 chicken feed poll while discussing how surveys are looked at skeptically, often for good reason.

"There isn't any news until somebody votes," he said, adding that is especially true of polls far ahead of Election Day, such as the already ubiquitous surveys on the 2012 presidential race. "Basically, all that's happening right now is name recognition."

TRUMP LEADS GOP PACK

Case in point: A couple of polls last week showed Donald Trump leading the pack of potential GOP presidential candidates.

A CNN survey showed Trump and Mike Huckabee tied at 19 percent each, topping the field.

Then Friday, Public Policy Polling, a Democratic firm, showed Trump, a reality TV star and hotel millionaire, blowing away the competition. He had 26 percent support among 400 Republicans surveyed nationwide. Huckabee had 17 percent, Mitt Romney 15 percent, Newt Gingrich 11 percent, Sarah Palin 8 percent, Ron Paul 5 percent and Michelle Bachman and Tim Pawlenty had 4 percent each.

This is before any Republican has officially declared a White House campaign, although Romney and Pawlenty have launched presidential exploratory committees that allow them to raise money and hire staff.

Rick Santorum also set up an organization to do the same.

All three men have been tromping through Nevada this year.

Jelen thinks it's so early that a dark horse GOP contender is likely to emerge and overtake the current polling front-runners, possibly even Romney, and overshadow big names such as Trump, Gingrich and Palin.

"I would be looking for candidates that people haven't heard of," Jelen said.

One to watch, he said, is Pawlenty, the former Minnesota governor. He is scheduled to be in Las Vegas on Monday for a private meeting with potential financial backers. It will be the second time this year Pawlenty has slipped into the city to meet power brokers.

"We're in the money primary at this point," Jelen said.

MONEY AFFECTS ODDS

Besides opinion polls and poultry feed surveys, some point to the online intrade.com as a good real-time indicator of who's up and who's down, since people can back their picks with money, making the odds move on the political market.

On Friday, Romney led the potential presidential pack with a 25.5 percent chance of winning the GOP nomination. He was followed by Pawlenty at 15.7 percent, Mitch Daniels at 8.8 percent, Trump at 8.8 percent, Bachman at 7 percent, Huckabee at 6.7 percent, Palin at 4.3 percent, Jon Huntsman at 4.2 percent, Haley Barbour at 3.8 percent, Gingrich at 3.1 percent and Paul at 2.2 percent.

And it dropped from there until folks such as Dick Cheney and Clarence Thomas had a 0.1 percent chance each.

Intrade.com was showing Obama with a near 60 percent chance of re-election.

The president will get to test his popularity in Nevada again this Thursday when he holds a town hall in Reno, the third in a series he is doing this week to tout his plan to cut the deficit by $4 trillion over 12 years.

OBAMA T-SHIRTS

There's certain to be a lot of pro-Obama T-shirts and signs in the friendly crowd and bumper stickers on cars in the parking lots -- another market-based measure of a politician's appeal.

CafePress.com, an online company that sells customized merchandise designed by users, proclaimed that its sales figures predicted the outcome of the 2008 presidential race.

A total of 2.8 million Obama-related products were created on CafePress.com in 2007 and 2008 compared with 1.7 million supporting U.S. Sen. John McCain, the GOP nominee.

Products range from T-shirts and coffee mugs to yoga mats and wall posters.

So far this year, Obama is leading -- in the battle against himself since there is no named GOP presidential nominee.

Here's the T-shirt tally, pro and con:

■ 777,000 pro-Obama T-shirts available.

■ 453,000 anti-Obama T-shirts available.

"It's almost like a sport team. Whoever sells the most T-shirts or products will win the campaign," said Michael Goon, a spokesman for CafePress.

Maybe.

Jelen has a cautionary tale that argues against that assumption, dating from when he was a long-haired, 19-year-old county coordinator in Illinois for George McGovern.

"I've never seen bigger or more enthusiastic crowds," Jelen recalled.

McGovern lost to Richard Nixon in 1972 by a landslide.

Contact Laura Myers at lmyers@ reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2919.