The Pittsburgh Press (November 6, 1944)
It’s Dewey easy, reveals Emil Hurja
Analyst has picked 5 of 6 elections right
By Scripps-Howard Service
Washington (UP) –
Along about election time, ever since 1932 up pops Emil Hurja, the big chart and graph man, with a forecast.
This time, Mr. Hurja says it’s Governor Dewey with 364 electoral votes. That would leave Mr. Roosevelt with a puny 167.
Mr. Hurja, who used to do the analyzing for the Democratic Party in the Jim Farley days, correctly forecast the 1932 and 1936 presidential races, and the 1934, 1938 and 1942 Congressional elections.
*Fell flat on Willkie
But there are some not above recalling that he foresaw a victory for the late Wendell Willkie in 1940; he said it would be Mr. Willkie by 353–178. The voters pulled the rug from under Mr. Hurja that time; the vote was Mr. Willkie 82, and Mr. Roosevelt 449.
Mr. Hurja laughs that off by telling a story about an old woman in Oklahoma who had a reputation as a weather prophet. Once she forecast snow for Muskogee on Aug. 15. When it didn’t snow, people asked her why she had made such a prediction, Mr. Hurja recounts.
“Well,” said the old lady, “think of the reputation I would have had if it had snowed.”
28 counties sampled
Mr. Hurja’s current method of arriving at a forecast consists of polling 28 counties (out of the country’s 3,069) which have perfect records on presidential elections for 11 consecutive times – since 1900.
If his poll of these counties is correct, Mr. Hurja contends, Governor Dewey should win by at least two million majority.
The poll indicates that Republicans have enjoyed a 7.1 percent increase in popularity since 1940, Mr. Hurja estimated.
This “key” counties include: Pennsylvania, Fayette; Maryland, Frederick and Washington; West Virginia, Berkeley, Marion and Wood; Indiana, Gibson and Vanderburgh; Ohio, Belmont and Ross; California, San Joaquin and Sutter.
Jack of all jobs
Mr. Hurja, son of Finnish immigrants, left his home in Michigan at 16, knocked around Alaska a few years, mining and reporting on a Fairbanks newspaper; worked his way through the University of Washington and was the university’s representative on the Ford peace ship; studied the oil industry and edited a small paper in Texas; then took his oil knowledge to New York where he opened an office as a mining analyst. As it turned out, the depression ended the enterprise and he turned to politics.
Mr. Hurja in 1932 convinced Frank Walker, one of the Democratic Party’s “angels,” that he could forecast accurately vote trends by a sampling process, similar to that used to test a mine’s potentialities.
Only three states wrong
That year, he hit the election result practically on the nose. He said the Democrats would get a plurality of 7,500,000. They got 7,200,000. He was wrong on only three states. Thereafter, election after election, he enhanced his reputation – until 1940 when he fell on his face.
But he got up, grinned, and now he’s adding up numbers again and coming out with answers and forecasts. To fill in the time between elections, Mr. Hurja is associate publisher of Pathfinder Magazine.