Home

Search

Browse

About IPO

Staff

Links

Polls and politics — the Percy-Seith race

SEN. Charles H. Percy's reelection separated into two campaigns: before and after the publication of the first Chicago Sun-Times straw poll 19 days before the balloting. In neither the pre-poll nor post-poll campaigns did the news media of Illinois cover themselves with anything resembling glory.

As far back as the summer of 1977, the in-depth surveys that were conducted by Market Opinion Research of Detroit (for Percy) and Peter Hart of Washington (for his opponent Alex R. Seith) indicated that the senator's standing with the voters was near the tipping point. And when the Democrats began radio and television advertising in late summer of 1978, their expensive polling intelligence detected a broad movement of support away from Percy and toward Seith.

Seith's early showing

All during this period the state's political press continued to treat Seith as a quixotic door-to-door plodder who had little chance of threatening the much better known incumbent. Reporters have learned to be skeptical of polls selectively cited by candidates. So Seith's campaign manager could find none who would consider the significance of a survey which showed Seith 12 points stronger in October than in September. Nor were the Chicago papers interested in any sort of in-depth examination of either Seith (Who is this man? What was his record on the county zoning board?) or the issues he was trying to raise against Percy. Editors of the Sun-Times were so convinced early in the campaign that readers would be put to sleep by what must surely be a dull and one-sided race, that they were reluctant to spend $50,000 on the straw poll. That Seith's challenge was not taken seriously by journalists who are presumably in touch with the political currents of Illinois was a monumental oversight.

In a state where California-style campaign consultants, Madison Avenue phrasemakers and sophisticated polling techniques were long considered unnecessary substitutes for precinct organization, the Sun-Times straw poll has been an institution since 1932 as an accurate and reliable measure of who's winning. Defying all the scientific sampling rules, seven teams of canvassers fan out through the wards of Chicago, the townships of Cook County and 40 of the 101 downstate counties. Each team is led by a staff reporter who visits the area and asks party chairmen and local editors for an off-the-cuff political profile of the county. Setting up at key street corners or shopping centers, the canvassers then invite all who happen by (and who identify themselves as registered voters in that county) to drop a sample ballot in the box. Professional pollsters throw up their arms at such a casual system. But it works, for essentially two reasons: the simulation of the voting process itself without intrusive interviewing, and the huge number of ballots or "straws." Last year's sampling of more than 50,000 Illinoisans in less than three weeks was, in fact, very like a mini-election.

Off-year polls

Except, of course, that only those people who are outdoors at the right place and time have a chance of participating. Gauging turnout in an off-year election gives all pollsters fits. The Sun-Times poll deals with the problem by ignoring it. At that, the greatest source of possible distortion is the practice of reporting the partial results daily in horse race fashion while the representative sample is being accumulated. By manipulating the order of districts canvassed, the newspaper conceivably could give the impression that the campaign was changing direction.

While the Sun-Times was still deciding whether to spend the money for the poll, Percy's experts made some mistakes. Although Seith's name recognition was growing in step with his hard-hitting advertising, and survey respondents were grumbling about the Republican officeholder, the Percyites stuck with their "soft, positive" media campaign depicting a confident unconcerned senator. When the early Sun-Times figures indicated Seith was not only ahead but pulling away, political reporters were stunned. Based on their own polls, Percy's braintrust knew what had to be done. The people may be disenchanted with an elected official, and often are, but they aren't likely to replace him with someone they think even less of.

"The voters may have been unhappy with Percy," the senator's campaign manager James Nowlan noted after the election, "but few of them knew very much about the alternative. Our job was to fill in the blanks."

The Percy people had some timely help in filling the blanks, from the same newspaper that was keeping score. The Sun-Times, which had refrained all along from any calm, analytical coverage of Seith and his campaign, now weighted in with a harshly critical column by political editor Basil Talbott, purporting to explain in a few well-chosen and highly colored words just who Alex Seith was. This column was quickly reprinted by Percy's staff and distributed to 23,000 Republican workers all over the state.

Immediately thereafter the enormously articulate and influential Sun-Times columnist Mike Royko unloaded on Seith with a devastating attack

February 1979/Illinois Issues/32

accusing the Democrat of "mob" (crime syndicate) connections. Percy's advertising agency bought space in all but one daily newspaper in Illinois, plus the two St. Louis papers, the Gary (Ind.) Post-Tribune, the Economist newspaper group, and several other suburban weeklies to reprint the Royko column.

"The Royko columns were invaluable," Percy said later. "Our use of Royko caused quite a stir in the coffee-shops downstate," agreed his campaign manager Nowlan. Any lingering doubts about Royko's impact can be disspelled by a look at Vermilion County. The Danville Commercial-News, a Gannett newspaper published in that county, refused to run the ad after home office lawyers in Rochester, N.Y., advised that it might libel Seith. Although Vermilion is a staunch Republican county, Democrat Seith carried it on election day.

Had it not been for the Sun-Times poll, which awakened the public (and the press) to what was happening, Seith would probably have coasted home and on to Washington. Had it not been for the Royko columns, which "filled in the blanks" about Seith, Percy might still have lost. His image has always been that of the former boy wonder businessman who is above the sordid messiness of politics. The nonpartisan source of the accusations against Seith gave them credibility and relieved Percy of the uncomfortable necessity of visibly descending into the gutter himself.

Percy 16.8 points behind

At the conclusion of the first statewide straw poll sample eight days before the election, Percy had fallen 16.8 points behind. Had a gap of that size really existed? Sun-Times editor Ralph Otwell is among those who considered it exaggerated. Such a wide gap would probably have been insurmountable. Market Opinion Research's telephone poll of a sampling of 800 reported October 20, showed Percy with a 52-48 edge. A slightly smaller telephone sample at about the same time for Seith had it Seith 45, Percy 42, with 12 per cent undecided. Telephone polls have their own weaknesses. Black neighborhoods are less accessible. Straight-party voting is harder to judge.

By now the nervous poll coordinators were covering themselves by referring in their daily stories to the expectation that Percy would pick up ground as the senator started "active, energetic campaigning." While the straw pollers were charting what appeared to be wild gyrations — and while the columnists were supplying the anti-Seith ammunition — other Sun-Times reporters were reporting the "straight" news of the election. Their news accounts of Seith's campaign focused on what they saw as inconsistencies and alterations in his positions. The Democratic candidate was being riddled with criticism for his "negative" Butz racism commercial, although as far as I am aware this was the only Seith spot that went beyond the limits of aggressive but fair campaigning against a senator with a long record.

Gary South, Seith's campaign manager and hardly an objective observer, is quite bitter about it all. He contends that the self-fulfilling prophecy syndrome came into play once an election that the people had been told was a Percy runaway was revealed as something quite different. Having so badly misinterpreted what was happening earlier, according to this theory, the press had an institutional interest in nurturing that early version of reality, ending in a Percy triumph. "They hadn't covered our campaign worth a damn in 14 months," South complains, "and now in the final days the reporting ranged from bad to malicious."

It is not uncommon for a loser to see malice in what looks to the winner like responsible interpretation. But given the circumstances, South's complaint may not be only sour grapes. To the extent that newspapers such as the Sun- Times stress personalized, superficial, impressionistic reporting or politics, the voters are deprived of the information they need to make informed judgments on their own.

Built as it is on the gradual accumulation of a representative sample, the Sun-Times poll was not designed to measure sudden massive shifts of voter opinion. Sun-Times Editor Otwell said the poll might not have been conducted after all had the paper anticipated the "totally unprecedented changes of direction" just before the election.

Election is final poll

Over the final weekend, however, the pollsters recanvassed only certain areas, far from a statewide sample. Instead of adding these figures onto the total, which showed Seith still slightly ahead, they were used for a page one story, which declared: "More Voters Shift to Percy." In the only poll that counted, on election day, Percy won with 53.4 per cent.

It would be unconstitutional (and unwise) to regulate published polls, as some suggest. But freedom from regulation places a heavy responsibility on the newspaper proprietors of such polls to be fair, impartial and above reproach. That responsibility is all the greater when — as in this case — the Sun- Times publisher (like his father before him) was a close friend and political supporter of Percy since his first race in 1964. When a newspaper is supplying material that is being used for campaign literature; and when some of the news accounts in that paper are arguably slanted (all seemingly in support of the publisher's desire to pull this one out for Chuck); and when that same newspaper is keeping score — well, the potential for abuse of power smacks of another Chicago publisher, whose name was Robert R. McCormick.

We live in a post-McCormick area of political journalism. Television is enthralled with the theatrical presentation of fainting spells and interviews with the governor's Irish Setter. The wire services still have difficulty moving beyond the "traded verbal blows today" level of political analysis. Political editors don their columnist hats and spin out a vitriolic attack on one of the candidates and then expect the reader to be naive enough to trust the objectivity of their "straight" news stories of the same candidate. Indeed, if the newspapers dismiss most substantive political activity as boring and refuse to cover campaigns until the fainting and mud-slinging stage, what else is a candidate to do but turn out 30-second spots for television?

Had it not been for the Sun-Times poll, which awakened the public (and the press) to what was happening, Seith would probably have coasted home and on to Washington

February 1979/Illinois Issues/33