AFTER a month of false starts and wheel spinning, the McGovern campaign bandwagon is definitely on the move—backward. A new TIME poll conducted by Daniel Yankelovich Inc. between Aug. 25 and Sept. 12 shows that McGovern's campaign is having a negative effect: in several states where he has stumped the hardest, he has lost ground; and the issues he has emphasized the most are those that are now hurting him more than ever. The poll finds that Nixon leads McGovern by an astonishing 39 points—62% to 23%.
That is an 11-percentage-point increase over the spread Nixon enjoyed in a TIME Poll conducted the previous month. The latest poll was based on telephone interviews with 2,239 registered voters in 16 key states with a combined total of 332 electoral votes (270 are needed to win). For McGovern, the figures are almost uniformly bleak. However the American electorate is sliced, by age or income, occupation or ethnic group, party affiliation or religion, McGovern leads the President only among blacks, Jews and college-educated youth. With the exception of the Jews and Germans, Nixon has held or gained ground in every group and on every major issue. Most startling of all, the poll shows that a plurality of Democratic voters now prefer Nixon over their party's own candidate by a margin of 43% to 40%.
In some respects, of course, it is still early in the campaign, and there is still room for fairly drastic swings in voter mood and opinion—and in polls. McGovern's own, released last week, showed Nixon 56%, McGovern 34%, with 10% undecided. It was taken Sept. 13-15 by telephone among 1,200 voters.
In the past few months, McGovern's image has slipped badly. During the spring primaries, samplings by Yankelovich determined that McGovern projected himself as a "strong liberal." It was precisely his firm and often courageous stands on controversial issues that set him apart from and above the host of other Democratic challengers. Now McGovern is casting a slim and pale shadow. Yankelovich interprets McGovern's new image as that of a "weak radical." Almost one in three voters now believes McGovern to be radical, in spite of the fact that he has softened many of his positions. At the same time and partly for the same reason, three out of four voters, including half of his supporters, agree completely or partly that McGovern is "indecisive." In a country that seems to be growing more conservative, the tag "radical" is more than ever anathema. Add the image of weakness, and the result is a formula for overwhelming defeat.
State by state, issue by issue, category by category, the poll shows almost uniform slippage for McGovern. Among the more revealing findings: