POLLS: Gallup Throws Up His Hands

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Most pollsters see the Kennedy-Nixon race as about as close as a boy with an ice-cream cone, and most are as undecided on the outcome as that huge group of "undecideds" who confuse the statistics.

Last week Pollster George Gallup all but threw up his hands. "Unless this situation changes markedly between now and November 8," he said in Chicago, "no poll has any scientific basis for making a prediction."

Gallup, who claims a 1.7% total error for his presidential predictions since 1948 (despite the fact that, with certain exceptions, his intrepid clipboard artists poll only 1,500 people in a nation of 181 million*), admitted that he would be lucky to come off with a 4% error this time. Reasons: 1) the religion issue "helps and hurts," 2) there is a marked lack of enthusiasm for either candidate, and 3) the popular vote, as polled so far is so close that a small change in either direction could mean an electoral landslide. Along with the familiar "don't knows," polltakers have discovered a new category that might be called the "ain't telling" vote.

Lest his customers think that he is throwing in the pencil, Gallup later declared that he would keep on polling right up to election time, warned nervously that voter opinion has a way of shifting in the closing days of a campaign, as Gallup sorrowfully learned in 1948.