TIME Citizens Panel: The Sour, Frustrated and Volatile Voters of Election Year '72

Perhaps not since the Depression has the American electorate seemed quite so restive and unpredictable. In the midst of a spring of startling primaries, the mood of the voters has often been bigger news than anything the candidates have said or done. Clearly, the public's shifting predilections, opinions and prejudices are not only changing the nature of the election but also steering the U.S. toward what may be a crucial intersection of its history.

To monitor the changeable voter mood this election year, TIME has commissioned Daniel Yankelovich Inc. to select and periodically interview members of a TIME Citizens Panel. The panel consists of 200 citizens chosen at random out of a carefully selected larger sample of 2,000 people who are a cross section of the national voting-age population. Here is the first of seven reports on the American mood this election year:

THE voters of 1972 are in a sour, gloomy mood based on multiple frustrations. A majority of them are sick of the war in Viet Nam and feel that it is going badly. Most voters complain about street crimes and fear that all kinds of crime are increasing. They are angry at what they consider a still-spiraling cost of living and unfair, ever-rising taxes, while their income seems to be frozen. They regard busing to integrate schools as foolish. As they search for the causes of their malaise, they do not necessarily blame President Nixon. But they do feel that the Nixon Administration and party leaders lie to them. They do not trust the press, either. The cynicism extends, surprisingly, even to Nixon's celebrated summitry in Peking and his impending trip to Moscow. Most find these trips either a bore or downright harmful.

At least at the moment, the voters feel most intensely about the war—an issue that only a few months ago seemed to have subsided. Ranking a distant second to Viet Nam are taxes, inflation, crime and busing—all rated about equally aggravating to voters. Lesser but still important concerns are drugs and the lack of credibility among political leaders. There is a widespread feeling that the nation's millions of "little guys" are repeatedly being victimized by a relatively few "big guys." Voter comments on all of these issues are rarely restrained, often angry.