November 6, 2007
Lincoln and the Margin of Error Posted by Julie M. Fenster at 03:15 PM EST Eighty years before political polling became a science, and three months before the 1856 election, Abraham Lincoln made his prediction—his projection, in the modern parlance—of the results in Illinois. Lincoln wasn’t running for anything that year, but the election renewed his political prospects, drawing him into a decision to join the nascent Republican Party. I am mindful of his 1856 conundrums during this 2007 election year, because they are the stuff of my book The Case of Abraham Lincoln, about which I am giving talks at the drop of a hat these days. The new party would help Lincoln, of course, but he helped it first, giving speeches all over Illinois that helped to shape its stance and spirit. In his travels, Lincoln was a walking-talking news-gathering machine, consuming newspapers and talking to practically everyone. He had the knack of weighting such comments according to who was uttering them and what was said to prompt the discussion. In August, he made his projection of the November results. Here is how close he came: Candidate: Actual result / Lincoln’s Prediction Buchanan (Dem.): 44.1 percent / 46.2 percent
Fremont (Rep.): 40.2 percent / 42.4 percent
Fillmore (Know-Nothing): 15.7 percent / 11.4 percent [Simplified from The Case of Abraham Lincoln: A Story of Adultery, Murder and the Making of Great President] Lincoln was a remarkable politician. And not a bad mathematician. In the end, his prediction was off by an average of only 2.9 percent—even less than the modern-day margin of error.
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