Azizi: In my family, the Nebuchadnezzar rhyme was merely

Nebuchadnezzar, the king of the Jews,
Pulled off his stockings, but left on his shoes.

The 1936 election, these days, is chiefly remembered because a poll conducted by a magazine, the Literary Digest, predicted a landslide for Landon. Its sample of voters was chosen from telephone directories. In 1936, there were a lot of people who couldn't afford a telephone, and they mostly voted for FDR. A classic example of the danger of biased sampling. Folklore has it that the Literary Digest was so embarrassed that it went out of business, but I rather doubt that.