Polls Apart

In the heady climate of the Governors' Conference in Puerto Rico, New York's Nelson Rockefeller told reporters that he would base his decision about running for the 1960 Republican presidential nomination on what the pollsters showed this fall about his chances of beating Vice President Richard Nixon. By this week the pollsters themselves had given Rocky ample reason for regretting his statement.

Pollster George Gallup, in a canvass taken since Nixon's return from Russia and Poland, reported that Nixon, among both Republican and independent voters, had significantly increased his margin over Rockefeller in the past month:

Republicans Independents

July August July August

Nixon 61% 65% 36% 45%

Rockefeller 18% 19% 23% 22%

Adding a surprising tidbit to the intraparty race was a mailing poll conducted by Jet Magazine among 200 of the G.O.P.'s leading Negroes, who might be expected to back Rocky because of good works done over the years by family philanthropies. But Nixon took 81.7% to Rockefeller's 18.3%.

In a Gallup trial heat with hard-running Democratic Candidate John Kennedy,* Nixon had made a remarkable comeback since July. The results:

July August Kennedy 61% 52% Nixon 39% 48%

Near week's end, Rockefeller aides let it be known that Rocky had not said it all at Puerto Rico; that the Governor well realized that there is only one true and final poll on the presidency: the general election. Nelson Rockefeller prepared to make his position clearer.

*Who, said Gallup in still another poll, has slipped back by 3% in the last month to flat out (26% each) with Adlai Stevenson.

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