'October Surprise'

As the US election approaches, political pundits worldwide have begun to speculate on an "October Surprise" ahead of the November 3 vote. In American politics, an October Surprise is an intentionally crafted and timely maneuvered media event to attract or distract the voters and influence an election result, particularly for the US presidential race.

As the quadrennial US presidential election date is always in early November; the media stunts are usually planned for late October. The last-minute attempts likely have a massive impact on the political choice of the American electorates. These kinds of last-minute media maneuvers can alter the course of the election.

William Casey coined the term "October Surprise" when he was the election campaign manager for Ronald Reagan. Reagan successfully won the US nomination from the Republican Party for the 1980 race with the help of a "Surprise," that this article will deal with later.

Although the coining of the term is quite recent, the phenomenon itself goes long back in American political history. However, here are few cases of how an October Surprise reversed opinion polls and the final outcome in a US presidential election.

In 1972, Republican president Richard Nixon was bidding for reelection amid the Vietnam War. Democratic senator George McGovern was running for the presidency with an anti-war electoral agenda. He was ahead of Nixon in opinion polls. On October 26, Henry Kissinger, Nixon's national security adviser, announced the Surprise as "peace being at hand" in Vietnam.

Consequently, the Nixon election rallies were full of the placards on the end of the war. In reality, peace was not at anyone's hand, but Nixon was re-elected in a landslide despite his opponent being ahead of him in preelection opinion polls. McGovern called Kissinger's announcement "a cruel political deception."

Similarly, in 1980 the central election issue was the hostage crisis in Iran. That country's regime took 52 Americans hostage from the US Embassy in Tehran on November 4,