{"product_id":"9781640125964-predicting-the-winner","title":"Predicting the Winner","description":"\u003cmeta content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\" http-equiv=\"Content-Type\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe Untold Story of Election Night 1952 and the Dawn of Computer Forecasting\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWinner of the Ray Hiebert History of Journalism Published Work Award\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The history of American elections changed profoundly on the night of November 4, 1952. An outside-the-box approach to predicting winners from early returns with new tools-computers-was launched live and untested on the newest medium for news: television. Like exhibits in a freak show, computers were referred to as “electronic brains” and “mechanical monsters.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Yet this innovation would help fuel an obsession with numbers as a way of understanding and shaping politics. It would engender controversy down to our own time. And it would herald a future in which the public square would go digital. The gamble was fueled by a crisis of credibility stemming from faulty election-night forecasts four years earlier, in 1948, combined with a lackluster presentation of returns. What transpired in 1952 is a complex tale of responses to innovation, which Ira Chinoy makes understandable via a surprising history of election nights as venues for rolling out new technologies, refining methods of prediction, and providing opportunities for news organizations to shine.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e In \u003ci\u003ePredicting the Winner\u003c\/i\u003e Chinoy tells in detail for the first time the story of the 1952 election night-a night with continuing implications for the way forward from the dramatic events of 2020–21 and for future election nights in the United States.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Rarewaves","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":58355686605174,"sku":"9781640125964","price":35.51,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0092\/7504\/8033\/files\/stand_38152368.jpg?v=1785251689","url":"https:\/\/www.rarewaves.com\/products\/9781640125964-predicting-the-winner","provider":"Rarewaves.com","version":"1.0","type":"link"}