Science: Mathematical Prophet

Carl Snyder is regarded by his friends and admirers as one of the world’s wisest students of political and social phenomena, by his critics as an opinionated old windbag. He regards himself as a social scientist who brings scientific method to political prophecy and economic analysis. Onetime Federal Reserve Bank statistician, onetime president of the American Statistical Association, he is now retired to write about his findings (latest book:

Capitalism the Creator}, spends summers in the Berkshires, winters in Arizona, the rest of his time mostly in Manhattan. His writing style is marked by sentences without verbs and other syntactical vagaries. He dislikes bores, boobs, poseurs and stuffed shirts, has been known to walk out on parties when the talk irritated him. He is extremely fond of ice cream, fascinated by psychoanalysis, bothered by insomnia, the lack of parking space in Manhattan and the idea of death.

Statistician Snyder has made an analysis of political trends in the 48 States. He has charted the recent ups & downs of Democratic and Republican straw-polling. Then by mathematical means — the “calculus of probability” and the principles of momentum and inertia — he calculates the shape of the trend curves as they reach into the future. By noting the height of the curve at a given future time, say next November, he arrives at the voting sentiment which he believes will then exist.

Speaking at the University of Virginia’s Institute of Public Affairs last week, Mr.

Snyder said his calculations showed the Republican Presidential nominee would win the November election by about 100 electoral votes. Not counting four doubtful States, his tabulation disclosed 297 Electoral votes for the Republicans, 197 for the Democrats. As “probably Republican” (54% or more of the two-party vote) he listed Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont, Wisconsin, Wyoming.

Mr. Snyder is no friend of the New Deal. But his calculations cannot be entirely discounted as wishful thinking. In the summer of 1932 he predicted Franklin Roosevelt’s election, in 1936 he predicted that Roosevelt would be re-elected by an even bigger plurality than in 1932.