American Opinion Polls Favour Nixon’s Chances

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31786, 17 September 1968, Page 13

American Opinion Polls Favour Nixon’s Chances

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) NEW YORK, September 16. Mr Richard Nixon returned buoyantly to the Presidential election campaign trail today, encouraged by three separate surveys indicating that he would beat VicePresident Hubert Humphrey in the race to the White House.

The nation-wide surveys all put the Republican candidate ahead of his Democratic rival by handsome margins. Their message was the same: If the election were held today, Mr Nixon would win easily.

Opinion polls test popular feeling in the country, but the crucial factor in a Presidential election is how each individual State will vote. The candidate who comes out on top in a State takes all that State’s electoral votes,

and it is these which decide the election. Surveys of how the 50 States are expected to vote were carried out by the “New York Times”, and the magazines, “Newsweek” and “Time”. Of the total of 538 electoral votes, the “New York Times” gave Mr Nixon 346; “Newsweek” gave him 329; and “Time”, 328. The absolute majority needed for victory is 270. And in the “New York Times” and “Newsweek” surveys, the third party candidate, Mr George Wallace, the former Alabama Governor, was given as pushing Mr Humphrey into third place. The “Newsweek” survey

gives Mr Humphrey more popular votes than Mr Wallace, but it has Mr Wallace carrying nine States with 89 electoral votes to Mr,Humphrey’s 54 electoral votes from seven States. In the “Time” survey, however, Mr Humphrey out-dis-tances Mr Wallace. It gives the Vice-President 10 States, plus the capital, for 121 electoral votes, and Mr Wallace only four “sure” Southern States with 39 electoral votes. “Time” adds that Mr Wallace might take another 50 electoral votes in doubtful States. Muskie’s View In Washington today, Senator Edmund Muskie, of Maine, the Democratic Party’s Vice-Presidential nominee, said the nation could not “build a wall round black people and buy safety and security for society.” Senator Muskie said he thought the American people were drifting towards a view that immediate crime control was more import than eradicating poverty and its causes. The desire for instant action, he said, was largely responsible for the support being given to Mr Wallace. Senator Muskie accused Mr Nixon of intentionally playing down the role of poverty in crime “because he thinks the tough, police-orientated

stand is the popular one to take.” Mr Lawrence O’Brien, the national campaign chairman for Mr Humphrey, has urged American voters not to vote for either of the Vice-Presi-dent’s major rivals on the basis of “fear, hatred, and bigotry.” In an interview on the National Broadcasting Company’s “Meet the Press” television programme, Mr O’Brien, who resigned recently after two years and a half as President Johnson’s Post-master-General, indicated the Democratic Party’s concern that many voters are leaning towards Mr Nixon or Mr Wallace because of mounting dislike of racial turbulence. “If the national vote is cast substantially on this basis on November 5, this nation will suffer for it,” he said. Jets To Israel

In what appeared to be a deliberate effort to move several steps away from the Johnson Administration, Mr Humphrey argued last night that the sale of supersonic Phantom jets to Israel was now “a necessity.” Mr Humphrey spoke in support of such aid to Israel “despite the words of others,” thus apparently signalling his knowledge that high officials of the State Department, and perhaps President Johnson himself, favoured a delay in such shipments until efforts to negotiate a halt in the arms race in the Middle East are exhausted.

Mr Humphrey later suggested that Mr Nixon was “ducking” appearances on television interview programmes.

“Could it be that his silence, his refusal to speak on vital questions confronting America, helps to explain why Mr Nixon has not appeared on a network television news interview programme since the fall of 1966?” Mr Humphrey asked in a statement issued by the Democratic Party’s national committee. Mr Nixon has stated his y'Uiingness to debate the issues with the Vice-Presi-dent on televuton, but yesterday Mr O’Brien caiu d on him to give active support to legislation which would enable such debates to take place. Mr O’Brien claimed that Republican opposition on the Senate’s Inter-State and Foreign Commerce Committee was holding up a bill designed to relieve the television networks from the requirement of granting equal time to other Presidential candidates if they gave time to the two major contenders.