Word: pollstering
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People seem to be frightened about losing their jobs and savings and about what lies ahead. They are therefore closing ranks around the government they know." But a leading pollster read the election mood another way. "In many ways," he said, "it's a thinking man's election. The floating voter so crucial to victory is having trouble making up his mind. I'm afraid that for most of them it looks like another case of voting for the lesser of evils...
Unquestionably, public confidence in authority has sunk. Last week Pollster Louis Harris reported that people surveyed in January had an even lower opinion of Congress than they did of President Nixon, whose popularity has been at an all-time low for months. Harris found 69% of Americans thought Congress was doing only a "fair" or "poor" job. In an earlier survey, 68% of those polled expressed similar negative feelings about Nixon. Says Harris: "The federal establishment looks paralyzed, inept and impotent. In ten years of the Harris survey, confidence has never been this low before...
...surveys find that not more than 20% of the public go along with the proposition "We have been through bad times before, and things will once more return to the way they used to be." California Pollster Mervin Field assesses the public mood as one of "muted outrage, semi-shock-if not full shock -numbness, perplexity." Typically, a bewildered airline executive in Manhattan complains: "My salary has doubled in the past five years. I can't ask the company for more, they've been good to me already. But I can't keep up with expenses...
...Voters seem to be swinging to the right. There has been a marked increase in the number who consider themselves "conservative," granted that individual definitions of what conservative means vary widely. In 1971, Pollster Yankelovich found that 25% of the public labeled themselves conservative, 55% middle of the road and 20% liberal. By last December self-professed liberals had declined to 17% and those in the middle of the road to 37%, but conservatives had grown to 46%. On campus, the American Council on Education reported this month that its annual survey of college freshmen found that liberals continue...
...Bernard Bailyn, Sociologist Gene Sharp, John F. Kennedy Library Director Dan Fenn Jr., Head of Harvard Russian Research Center Adam Ulam, and Harold Demone Jr., professor of social welfare at Harvard Medical School. At a Monday-night dinner in Boston, the TIME contingent met with Pat Caddell, a young pollster who made a name for himself working in Senator George McGovern's presidential campaign, and three Massachusetts members of Congress: Margaret Heckler, Paul Cronin and James Burke...