Assessing '72

Immediately after Maine Senator Edmund Muskie's powerful mid-term election-eve television speech, Pollster Louis Harris set up a mythical presidential race between Muskie, President Nixon and George Wallace. The startling result was a Muskie victory, with 46% of the vote, compared with 40% for the President. Last week George Gallup announced the results of an almost identical sampling taken a month later. In this trial, Nixon squeaked by the Democratic front runner, 44% to 43%. Whether the difference is due to increased presidential popularity or to the vagaries of polltaking two years before the event is difficult to know. In any case, there can be scant comfort in the new survey for the White House, since Gallup, like Harris, found the undecided vote to be 4%, making Nixon's 1% margin rather fragile.

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