Polls & Portents

POLITICAL NOTES

> For all the talk of California Governor Ronald Reagan's ascendant star in the Republican Party, the Gallup poll last week suggested he still had far to climb. The poll showed Richard Nix on maintaining a commanding lead among the Republican rank and file as a presidential preference. Nixon was the choice of 39% of Republicans polled, trailed by Michigan's Governor George Romney with 25%. But both have slipped a bit since the last sampling in May, while Reagan, who came in third, has increased his support from 7% to 11%. That places him one point ahead of New York's Governor Nelson Rockefeller, four points ahead of Illinois' Senator Charles Percy.

> Another poll, conducted by New York's John H. Kraft, Inc., revealed, to no one's astonishment, that members of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. overwhelmingly fa vor the re-election of Lyndon Johnson in 1968. The report, based on inter views with 1,700 unionists, showed the President a 55%-to-22% favorite over Nixon, 46%-to-30% favorite over Romney, and a 60%-to-16% choice over Reagan. There was one surprise, though, and a portent of trouble. A.F.L.-C.I.O. members under the age of 30, more flexible in their political allegiances than their fathers, preferred Romney over Johnson by 47% to 42%.

> In Virginia, political fief of the late Harry Byrd for four decades, last week's Democratic primary elections indicated that the old Byrd machine might be rattling toward a final breakdown. Sidney Severn Kellam, a chief mechanic of the machine for 36 years, lost his political power base in the Norfolk area when five of the eight candidates supported by his organization for the state legislature and local offices were defeated by allies of Virginia's moderate U.S. Senator William Spong. With the power center of the Old Dominion's politics shifting inexorably from the county courthouses to the cities, Spong, whose political thinking is akin to that of progressive Republicans like Massachusetts' Senator Edward Brooke and Illinois' Percy, is emerging as a Democratic leader to reckon with in the new Virginia.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.