"The low point for that train, according to Clifford, came toward the middle of October. As they paused in a small Midwest town, a member of the staff jumped off and bought the October 11 issue of Newsweek. The big black type read: FIFTY POLITICAL EXPERTS UNANIMOUSLY PREDICT A DEWEY VICTORY. "Unaminously," someone said hollowly, and there was a long silence. One of them trudged back and showed it to Truman. He blinked, grinned, and said lightly, "Oh, those damned fellows; they're always wrong anyway. Forget it, boys, and let's get on with the job." At that point, Clifford believes, neither Bess nor Margaret believed that the President had a chance. He himself did, however, and afterward he could prove it. On the afternoon of October 13, while riding from Duluth to St. Paul, he wrote out his state-by-state analysis of the coming vote on the back of a mimeographed copy of his Duluth speech and handed it to George Elsey, who sealed it and put it away until the day after the election. It then developed that Truman had predicted 340 electoral votes for himself, 108 for Dewey, 42 for Thurmond, with 37 marked "doubtful." It wasn't on the nose, and it omitted four electoral votes, but a great many men whose job was forecasting elections would have given almost anything to have written it."