Kennedy won the votes Carter won the delegates

Press, 7 June 1980, Page 9

Kennedy won the votes Carter won the delegates

By

ADAM CLYMER

of the

York Times” Senator Edward Kennedy, Jn ,the last eight presidential primaries this week won the regions that a Democrat needs in a general election ■— but President Carter won the delegates that a Demo-

crat needs to be nominated. Mr Kennedy won in New ; Jersey and California, where he said he had to. Mr Carter ' won in Ohio where he said he would, although he lost : the northern, heavily indus- i trial part of that state. Mr./ Kennedy also captured ;

Rhode Island, South Dakota and New Mexico, while Mr Carter won Montana and West Virginia. From Block Island, which Mr Kennedy carried nine, to eight in sweeping the primary in heavily Democratic Rhode Island, to Los Angeles County, which he took (502,799 to 347,418) as he won solidly in California, he edged out Mr Carter, in the dav’s total vote — 2,605,936 to 2,414,220. In the campaign’s final weeks. Mr Kennedy said that the totals of the eight states were the only numbers that were important: He then offered to withdraw ,if Mr Carter would change his mind and join in a debate and then come out ahead in that popular vote. : / The and the Supporters who did most of his campaigning, argued that delegate totals were the key, and even as they were beaten badly in New Jersey, : they won 45 delegates there, or more than enough to get the 1666 majority needed for nomination. When all the votes were , counted, Mr Carter won 321 delegates to 372 for Mr Kennedy. That was far more than enough for the President, even if it was the first time that he had come out ( of a primary night: with .a < net loss of more than a single delegate — his mar- • gin of defeat in Pennsylvania bn April-22 — since Mr Kennedy won in New York : and Connecticut on March 25.- ■ - Mr Kennedy’s failure . to <

win more than a ' single primary in May, the one in the District of Columbia, made this week’s delegate totals anti-climactic and irrelevant, the Carter campaign argued. But the places the votes, came from were at least as Srtant as the totals. In omia, Mr Kennedy took the big population centres, except for San Diego and the central valley. Mr Carter won more counties, but smaller ones, and got only 38 per cent of .the vote -to Mr Kennedy’s 44. In Ohio, Mr Kennedy won in Cleveland, Akron, Youngstown and Toledo, where lay-offs are biting. Mr Car-, ter took Columbus, Dayton, Cincinnati, and most of the rural parts of the state. There Mr Carter’s 51 to 44 per cent margin reflected an increase of 144,588 in his winning total, compared with the 1976 primary figures, as the total turn-put increased by 191,688. In New Jersey, the regional patterns were less dramatic as Mr Carter maintained his record of never winning an election in the Garden State. Mr Kennedy swept the 15 congressional districts, doing best among suburban liberals but also carrying urban Hudson County, despite machine support for Mr Carter. As it has whenever Mr Kennedy managed to do well in the 1980 primaries, the lagging economy helped him. as. shown? by the patterns of the returns and the results from “New York Times”C.B.S. News polls. 1

The polls suggested that the anti-Carter voters outnumbered the anti-Kennedy voters, except in Ohio. In New Jersey and California, for example, just 21 per cent of the Democrats who voted said that they approved of Mr Carter’s handling of the economy, a level as low as that in New York 10 weeks earlier. In New Jersey, just over half of those polled as they left voting booths said that their family economic situation was worse than a year ago, and even though only 40 per cent thought Mr Kennedy’s word could be trusted, they voted heavily for him, or against Mr Carter. . The President was held in only slightly higher regard in Ohio, where 27 per cent approved his handling of the economy and 42 per cent said that he displayed strong leadership. But only threequarters of those who voted for Mr Carter said that they would do so again in November, a dangerous figure for a major state that he carried by only 11,116 votes in November, 1976. In the Republican primaries, in the same eight states plus Mississippi, Ronald Reagan won 416 of the 423 delegates at stake. His lowest percentages of the Republican popular vote were in New Mexico and Rhode Island, where the figures were 64 and 71 per cent. Everywhere else he was in the range of 80-plus per cent