The 1946 Allied Mission to Observe Greek Elections

The 1946 Allied Mission to Observe Greek Elections was set up to guarantee the fairness of the elections and of the plebiscite on monarchy that rival political factions had agreed to hold following the armed clashes of December 1944 and January 1945. To that end, the most recent developments in probabilistic sampling were put to use and a team of experts was sent to conduct a series of surveys on the conditions in which these consultations were held. The purpose of this paper is to examine this controversial yet largely forgotten episode, which sits at the intersection between the history of Anglo-American foreign intervention during the early Cold War and that of survey sampling as a scientific tool.