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HYRC Strikes At Crimson's Polling Result

The Young Republican Club condemned the CRIMSON'S presidential preference poll last night as a "pernicious mis-representation of political sentiment at Harvard."

Charging the CRIMSON with "an irresponsible display of partisanship" and "insidious statistical maneuvering," HYRC president Edmund R. Schroeder '53 said General Dwight D. Eisenhower won the poll, but the CRIMSON "used outside sources in two Democratic strongholds to insure a victory for Governor Adlai E. Stevenson."

Schroeder referred to the use of results from the Law School and Adams House which showed a greater number of students voting than did the CRIMSON'S. The Law School Democratic and Young Republican clubs, and the Adams House newspaper conducted the polls from which these results were taken.

The original CRIMSON poll gave Eisenhower a 32 vote victory. When the outside groups' Law School and Adams House results were substituted for the CRIMSON'S, Stevenson won, 1942 to 1815.

CRIMSON managing editor Laurence D. Savadove issued the following statement last night in reply to Schroeder:

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"The day before the CRIMSON'S polling began, it was decided that should our poll of any unit of the University show a smaller percentage return than a previous poll of the same unit by another group, we would use the poll with the highest returns. At that time, we knew neither the results of our poll, nor the results of the previous ones at Adams House and the Law School.

"We found the number of returns we obtained at Adams House and the Law School were far smaller percentage wise, than those of any other place polled. This was probably because both places had been polled before. We therefore used the results of the other groups, clearly noting this fact in the story."

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