The future while it happened

by Samuel Lubell

162 pages, Unbound

First published January 1, 1973

About the author

American writer and public opinion analyst. He pioneered door-bell-ringing technique of voter interviews that led him to successful predictions of winning candidates and issues in the 1950's and '60's.
Lubell, who grew up in New York and began his career as a newspaper reporter for The Long Island Daily Press, pioneered a type of political analysis that combined some of the scientific approaches of social scientists with the personal touch of face-to-face interviews. Armed with data on past elections in areas around the country, Lubell would pick places that showed consistent trends and interview hundreds of voters.
Lubell was born Samuel Lubelsky in Poland and came to the United States with his parents when he was 2 years old. He was reared in New York, where he graduated from City College of New York and earned a graduate degree at the Columbia University School of Journalism. He received that school's Pulitzer Traveling Scholarship in 1933.

In 1938 he moved to Washington and worked for The Washington Post, The Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch and The Washington Herald. He also began a free-lancing relationship with the Saturday Evening Post that was to last for 21 years.
In 1941 he joined the Office of War Information at the request of Bernard M. Baruch, an old friend who was head of the office. Mr. Lubell later served as Mr. Baruch's chief aide as well as White House assistant to James F. Bynes, the director of the Office of Economic Stabilization. 'Historic Break With Past'
It was after the war that Mr. Lubell began his public opinion polls and political analyzing in earnest as the Saturday Evening Post assigned him to analyze President Truman's surprise victory. Over the years he helped popularized analysis that focused on the coalitions that formed the support of a political party, highlighted the explosive role of racial issues in the social structure and elective politics as well as the elements that signaled a political realignment in the country.
In addtion to writing a syndicated political column for United Features Syndicate, ''The People Speak,'' Mr. Lubell was the author of six books, including ''The Future of American Politics'' (1952), ''White and Black (Test of a Nation) (1964) and ''The Hidden Crisis in American Politics'' (1970). From 1958 to 1968 he organized and directed the Opinion Reporting Workshop at Columbia and later taught courses at American University in Washington and was a Kennedy fellow at Harvard University.