Reply to Bastedo

were Democrats. In this last of polls before the July 13-14 Miami convention, McGovern's plurality was 30 percent. So the published data are both statistically significant and reliable. In the month after the California primary and before the Miami convention, McGovern's candidacy was not third ... behind Hubert Humphrey and George Wallace (p. 25). McGovern was first. He retained a plurality in June 1972 no matter how Gallup phrased the questions. Political strategists will derive no easy lessons from McGovern's subsequent electoral debacle. After all, the Democratic convention did nominate its most popular candidate. And this brutal couplet of facts must be considered in 1976 when evaluating the belated preconvention plurality and subsequent electoral bid of Jimmy Carter

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