Sunday, March 19, 1944: The first Minnesota Poll
Posted on June 12th, 2007 – 2:44 AMBy Ben Welter
The Minnesota Poll, introduced in March 1944, is one of the nation’s oldest public opinion polls. In its early years, the poll covered a range of political, economic, religious and social topics. Here’s a taste of the questions, as reported in the Star Tribune on the 50th anniversary of the poll:
1944: Two-thirds of men said they preferred cuffed suit pants.
1944: 87 percent of Minnesotans reported eating breakfast every day.
1945: 19 percent said children should not be taught to believe in Santa.
1947: 10 percent thought the Upper Midwest was called the land of the sky-blue waters.
1950: As the Korean War raged, more than half said they believed World War III was underway.
1958: 58 percent said they didn’t believe in leaving tips.
The poll has weathered its share of criticism, most recently when it showed John Kerry with an 8-point lead over George Bush in Minnesota in the closing days of the 2004 presidential campaign. The final result was much closer, and some Republicans called for Rob Daves, the poll’s director, to resign.
The poll’s future is unclear. Daves has left the paper, along with scores of other newsroom employees swept away in two rounds of buyouts in the wake of Avista Capital Partners’ purchase of the paper this spring. No Minnesota Poll has been published since the 2006 elections.
The very first Minnesota Poll, sporting a headline that would not be out of place in 2007, made a relatively quiet splash. It appeared on the front of the “Minnesota Section,” not on Page One.
3 Out of 4 in Minnesota Say
They Can’t Cut Use of Gasoline
Nearly 50 per cent of Minnesota people believe their communities can reduce consumption of gasoline, but almost three out of four said “no” when asked whether their families could get along with less gasoline.
This was brought out in the first report of THE MINNESOTA POLL, inaugurated to measure opinion on questions of timely interest.
The poll, on the question of gasoline usage, is of particular interest and importance, because of the reduction in “A” gasoline coupon value which goes into effect March 22.
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Tapping a cross section of Minnesotans, the poll revealed 48 per cent believe their communities could get along on less gasoline while 42 per cent said their communities couldn’t reduce the amount used. Ten per cent offered no opinion.
This was the overall response to this question;
“The OPA announced the war effort will suffer unless Minnesota reduces its consumption of gasoline. Generally speaking, do you think the people in your community could get along on less gasoline?”
Breaking the totals down, it was revealed opinion varied between different groups and different communities. Defining a city to be anything over 2,500 population, a town to be any settlement under 2,500 population, and a farm to consists of at least three acres of ground and a $250 crop, for instance, the city group appeared more optimistic concerning a cut in rations.
To the above question, 52 per cent of city people said “yes,” 37 per cent said “no” and 11 per cent had no opinion.
Of town people, 53 per cent said “yes,” 37 per cent “no” and 10 percent had no opinion.
Of farmers, 38 per cent said yes, 54 per cent “no” and 8 per cent had no views in the matter.
When the question is narrowed from the community to the family, which is to say the individual, however, the picture is different. This is the result when respondents were asked if their families could be were asked if their families could reduce consumption of gasoline:
No …………. 70 per cent
Yes …………. 28 per cent
No answer ….. 2 per cent
Of this group, farmers were most positive in their aggregate answer. Seventy-nine per cent of farmers said they could not individually reduce gasoline consumption. Only 19 per cent agreed they could. Two per cent had no opinion.
Thirty-three per cent of each of the city and town groups, however, believed they could reduce consumption. Of city people, 66 per cent said they could not; of town people, 67 per cent said they could not get along on less gas.
Of the 28 per cent who said that they could reduce the consumption of gasoline, the following question was asked:
“How much less gasoline could you get along on?”
Here are the results by city, town and farm:
| City | Town | Farm | |
| Could reduce half | 21% | 11% | 0 |
| Could reduce quarter | 22% | 28% | 21% |
| Could reduce 10 per cent | 33% | 45% | 55% |
| Don’t know | 24% | 16% | 24% |
Most results of the poll appeared, on the surface at least, to correspond to accessibility of public transportation. Farmers, located away from public centers, were most reluctant to agree to allotments, and then plumbed for the smallest reduction possible.
Town and city people ran neck and neck on most divisions of the subject, agreeing closely on community and individual reduction. In the amount of reduction, however, they split, the city dweller believing he could effect a more drastic saving.
Further interesting results of the Minnesota Poll will appear each Sunday in the Sunday Tribune.
Eight prominent Minnesotans pass upon the policies and the phrasing of questions submitted to the cross-section of Minnesota.
Members of this Advisory committee include:
W.C. Coffey, president, University of Minnesota.
Donald J. Cowling, president, Carleton College, Northfield.
Mrs. George W. Sugden, Mankato, president, Minnesota Federation of Women’s clubs.
Robert A. Olson, Duluth, president, Minnesota Federation of Labor.
John S. Pillsbury, chairman of the board, Pillsbury Flour Mills, company, Minneapolis.
Randolph Hugan, general manager, Augsburg Publishing House, Minneapolis.
Einar Kulvinen, New York Mills, president, Minnesota Farmers Union.
Mrs. Phillip S. Duff, Wayzata, president, Minnesota League of Women Voters.
Pierce Butler, Jr., St. Paul, attorney.
Frank W. White, Marshall, president, Minnesota Farm Bureau federation.
Rabbi Albert G. Minda, Minneapolis.
O.J. Jerde, St. Cloud, president, Minnesota Education association.
The Rev. James H. Moynihan, Minneapolis.
One response to "Sunday, March 19, 1944: The first Minnesota Poll"
Based on my experience participating in the Minnesota Poll a few years ago, I say “good riddance” about its demise.
I have not written about this incident before. Definitely would’ve liked to have had it addressed in the Readers’ Representative column back when the problem occurred, but the timing happened to be right on top of the 9-11 tragedy. So naturally, that situation far overshadowed any possible interest in more mundane things like local politics and how the Minnesota Poll was being (shoddily) conducted.
I was one of the 600-some likely Minneapolis voters interviewed by the Minnesota Poll that August or September, about the upcoming mayoral race between challenger R.T. Rybak and Sharon Sayles-Belton.
About halfway through the questions, I got uncomfortable enough with the interviewer seeming to be leading me to express stronger opinions, especially on obscure topics, than I genuinely had in me. . . such that I finally asked: “Don’t you offer a “don’t know” or “don’t care” option?
It was only then that the interviewer acknowledged that indeed she could accept and tally that sort of response too.
So then I said: “So, why didn’t you say so, to begin with? To half of the questions you’ve asked so far, I would’ve answered that way, had I known that I had that option.” She replied with something like: “Well, we find that we get better answers from people if we don’t bring that up; otherwise, we get too many “I don’t knows”.
[And, she would not let me go back to change some of my earlier responses to “don’t know”.]
Well, that’s a very unscrupulous polling practice. (And the Strib should’ve known that it was occurring.)
My guess then became that the subcontracting interviewing outfit had to be a commercial enterprise, intent on producing striking results, to please the client. . . . when faced with actual voters’ feelings about that mayoral race that were pretty tepid.
For the record, the outfit that the Strib was sub-contracting that interviewing work to was: Market Solutions Group (as the interviewer identified when I asked her, and as confirmed by my reviewing just now the Sept. 23, 2001, Strib article, from the Strib archives, in which the results of that poll were reported). Market Solutions is a downtown-Minneapolis Marketing-Research company.
One other point: Another good reason to abandon things like the Minnesota Poll as we know them is their reliance on lists of land-line phone numbers as the pool from which subjects are randomly drawn. Lots of people, especially younger ones, no longer have land lines. So land-lines lists are no longer a reliable sampling pool, except for surveys about land-lines.
[Note: I have also twice been selected by the Nielsen ratings outfit to participate in TV-viewing surveys in the past couple of years. I imagine that they too rely on land-line-users lists; if so, their methods and results are equally open to criticism.]
