HOW THE POLLS DID

In his final sampling for TIME, completed Oct. 19, Pollster Daniel Yankelovich found Jimmy Carter ahead of Gerald Ford, 45% to 42%. That lead was precisely the margin by which the Democrat, according to nearly complete returns, won the popular vote (51% to 48%). George Gallup continued polling until three days before the election and gave Ford an edge of 47% to 46%. Louis Harris wound up a day later and found Carter ahead by 46% to 45%. Given the standard 3 point margin for error, all three polling organizations did well in detecting a close race.

In their final soundings, both Gallup and Harris termed the election too close to call. Each had given Carter a lead of 30 or so points immediately after the Democratic National Convention in July, and each had traced the steady--and inevitable--erosion of that lead. Yankelovich did not poll immediately after the Democratic Convention, when Ford had not yet been chosen, and consequently never found more than a 10-point lead for the Democrat. Nonetheless, he too picked up the falling-off to a dead heat but also registered Carter's rebounding to the 3% lead.

The singularities of the 1976 election--with two candidates who displayed well-developed capacities for blundering--gavepollsters their sternest test. They appear to have earned good grades.

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