POLLS: Rock in the Road

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Checking last spring on the 1960 presidential preferences of Republican voters, the Gallup poll found Vice President Richard Nixon the far-and-away leader, with 64% against only 9% for the runner-up, California's Senator William Knowland. Checking again last week, in the wake of the 1958 elections, the pollsters found a far more imposing Nixon roadblock in New York's Governor-elect Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller. The new listing:

Nixon 51%

Rockefeller 31%

Henry Cabot Lodge 6%

Harold Stassen 4%

Others, No opinion 8%

Equally significant, between the two leaders the survey showed Rockefeller actually ahead of Nixon among independent voters:

Rockefeller 40%

Nixon 38%

Undecided 22%

Flying home last week from a postelection South American vacation, New York's Rockefeller flew on to Washington for a meeting of President Eisenhower's Advisory Committee on Government Organization, stayed for a 55-minute talk with Richard Nixon. At talk's end Rockefeller said he and Nixon had agreed that the G.O.P. should develop as many men of national stature as possible and have them available for the 1960 G.O.P. presidential nomination.