Word: ropers
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Wall allowed himself a statistical error of 2%, definitely predicted that Roosevelt would win the popular vote although Willkie might have a majority on the electoral college. But in 1940, as in 1936, the closest estimate of the popular vote was made by quiet, curly-haired Elmo Burns Roper, who has never made any great hullabaloo because he was one of the first to undertake political polls by the scientific sampling method and still makes no extravagant claims for his surveys...
...Roper still considers the quadrennial roundup of U. S. citizens at the polls chiefly as a check on the accuracy of his surveys-a means of calibrating for errors in his sampling method. He pays close attention to the phrasing of questions in his interviews, in order to get the real beliefs of inarticulate or evasive citizens...
Relying on scientific methods rather than the size of his sample, Roper, with a small staff of interviewers (81, compared to Gallup's 1,100 and Wall's 4,000), seldom samples the opinions of more than 5,000 citizens, chosen according to age, occupation, sex, economic condition, geographical distribution. (Gallup, in his State-by-State polls, may question as many as 60,000 people.) Roper's interviewers are carefully trained, rigidly supervised to prevent personal opinions from affecting their work. Always he checks back, querying interviewees by post card, to make sure that his interviewers have...
When Franklin Roosevelt let "Uncle Dan" Roper drowse on at Commerce for almost six years, it was apparent that he did not take very seriously the job which Herbert Hoover made one of the biggest in the Government. When the scandals of the 1938 Congressional campaign made Friend Harry's WPA job uncomfortably hot, Uncle Dan was moved out to make room for him. For the last year and a half, Hopkins' health has kept him away from his desk most of the time. Recently his health has improved slightly, but last week this was the excuse...
...Canadian ports, that Nazi Germany might claim Canada if she won-in which case unfortified bridges and boundaries would comfort neither U. S. citizens nor Canadians. Smooth Mr. Moffat raised no such grim prospects. Quizzed over the phone by a Toronto newspaper on how long he would stay ("Mr. Roper and Mr. Cromwell each spent about three months") he was reassuring: "I know ... I know . . . I'll stay longer. . . . There will be more and more to do. What these things are we can't reveal now, but Canada has become a most important post...