Predicting the Winner

“In Predicting the Winner, Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative-journalist-turned-historian Ira Chinoy tells the hair-raising story of the first widely televised U.S. presidential election, in 1952. But it wasn’t only televised. It was computerized. With predictions made by robots and whirring, blinking, flashing machines. Based on stunning archival research, the tale offers a vital parable for our times.”—Jill Lepore, author of These Truths: A History of the United States

“A fascinating, thoroughly researched account of how the electronic computer muscled its way into our consciousness during the 1952 presidential election, when both the computer and the medium of television were new. Some of the ways established veteran journalists wrestled with their relationship to the ‘giant brain’ are amusing, but in light of recent events, perhaps the joke is on us. You are guaranteed to have fun reading it.”—Paul Ceruzzi, coauthor of A New History of Modern Computing

“This well-researched book is a road map for practices that served as a foundation for election-night reporting up to our own time. And perhaps most important, it shows the challenges faced by pollsters and prognosticators when predicting how an election night will turn out, even in today’s world of AI and vastly more powerful predictive models than those first tried out decades ago.”—Jack Speer, newscaster, NPR

“The year 1952 was an inflection point in American culture—the introduction of computers, projections, and even TV news into our election nights. In this insightful and immensely readable telling of the tale, historian and journalist Ira Chinoy explains how the innovations came about and how they are relevant to our current times. This is a book for anyone who cares about politics, thinks about technology, and wants to know where we are going by understanding where we have been.”—Tom Rosenstiel, coauthor of The Elements of Journalism

“Election night in the United States is the most prominent and fraught intersection of politics, technology, and culture. Ira Chinoy’s deeply researched and beautifully narrated account of computers and television in their shared infancy explains how this came to be and why it is so important to understand.”—Robert Friedel, author of A Culture of Improvement: Technology and the Western Millennium

“Election night on television is dominated by touch-screen maps and other technological wizardry. Predicting The Winner takes us back to when computers made their infamous debut in forecasting the next president on national television. Ira Chinoy uses the researching and reporting skills that won him multiple Pulitzer Prizes to dig out this important but mostly untold moment.”—Mike Conway, author of Contested Ground: “The Tunnel” and the Struggle over Television News in Cold War America