New York, Sept. 6—There is something of a revival of Republican morale in the air, and it is altogether bracing. It demonstrates, moreover, the volatility of the polls. Only yesterday—specifically, on July 30—Mr. Kevin Phillips, the political demographer, who never quite understands it when history fails to slide down the bannister he has prepared for it, was telling us that the Reagan campaign for the Presidency was a huge flop—because Reagan talked about the themes Reagan thought the American people should be concerned about, rather than the themes Phillips thought the American people should be concerned about. Whence the fiasco, said Phillips. “A simple yardstick will suffice,” he wrote in his column. “Late this winter, Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter were virtually neck and neck in Gallup Polls. Now Reagan trails 64 to 28 per cent.”
That’s right, and late in August, Jerry Ford having adopted the Reagan line and become the beneficiary of the Reagan votes, Carter’s edge over Ford is down to nine points. When you meditate on the difference in the registration of the two parties—18 per cent for the Republicans, over twice that for the Democrats—the figures suggest that the Republican Party has done a much better job of fielding someone with a platform appealing to non-Republicans than the Democrats have done in fielding a candidate appealing to non-Democrats. Really, if I were a Democrat, enjoying the huge advantage I enjoyed over the Republicans in registration figures, I’d feel terribly . . . mortified . . . whenever the differential in the Gallup Poll is less than the differential in the figures.
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