(See Cover)
In the Royal Suite of Los Angeles' venerable Ambassador Hotel, a man clad only in dark-rimmed glasses and a long white nightshirt with red polka dots sat watching television. On the screen, Richard Dix was battling his way against great odds through a 1941 horse opera called The Round-Up. After many a cliffhanging episode, the Good Guys vanquished the Bad Guys, and the Grand Old West once again was made fit for Decent Folks.
Barry Morris Goldwater, 55, was relaxing, almost oblivious of the fact that on that same afternoon last week, more than 2,000,000 California Republicans were making a decision that would weigh heavily on his personal future as well as that of his party and perhaps his country. "I don't worry about it," said Goldwater. "We take what comes. We've done the best we can."
The best was good enough. When the votes were finally counted in California's Republican presidential primary, Goldwater had defeated New York's Nelson Rockefeller by a dime-thin 59,000 votes—1,089,133 (51.3%) to 1,030,180 (48.7%). And with his California victory Goldwater came within handshaking distance of the G.O.P.'s 1964 presidential nomination (see box on p. 33).
The Pollsters. In his effort to achieve that nomination, Goldwater has become the central figure in as classic an American folktale as any horse opera. To his admirers he is the very epitome of the Good Guy, fighting to make the U.S. fit for Decent Folks. To his critics he is the personification of the Bad Guy, shooting first and answering questions afterward. In traveling the California trail, he faced not only a direct shoot-it-out with Rocky, but passed through close-call ambushes from the pollsters and the press, which raised about him an aura of defeat.
Rarely have the pollsters shown to worse effect. Take the case of Lou Harris, who, after missing by a total of 13 points in his prediction that Henry Cabot Lodge would beat Rockefeller in Oregon's May 15 primary, announced that Rocky led Goldwater by 57% to 43% in California. Then Harris began having anguished second thoughts. Twenty-four hours before last week's primary, he said that Rocky might get 55% or more. But on the morning of the election, he was less bullish about Rocky, declared, "Goldwater has seized the momentum in the last 24 hours. Dramatic changes now are taking place in California."
One factor that misled the pollsters throughout was the large number of voters who insisted that they were "undecided." Former Congressman Pat Hillings, long a Nixon lieutenant and now a Goldwater leader in California, later explained: "The big undecided vote was not undecided. The undecideds were mostly Goldwater-oriented, but they didn't want to admit it to the pollsters. The opposition succeeded in tying the tin can of extremism to Goldwater's tail, and so a vote for Goldwater was in danger of being considered a vote for extremism. And what respectable Republican businessman wants to be an extremist—much less admit it openly?