Dukakis Trailing by 11 Points in Poll, With Many Undecided

Democratic presidential nominee Michael S. Dukakis trails Vice President George Bush by a margin of 52% to 41% among likely voters but remains within striking distance of an upset victory because many Americans haven’t firmly decided on their choice, according to an opinion poll released Monday by Times Mirror Co.

A surprisingly high 29% of those surveyed said that they were either undecided or may change their minds in the final days of the campaign, the report said.

But the poll, taken by the Gallup Organization, said the sample of voter sentiment in the period from Oct. 23 to 26 shows no major change from surveys taken during the last six weeks.

“Currently, Bush leads Dukakis by 8 percentage points among all registered voters and by 11 points when the sample is narrowed to those most likely to cast ballots on Nov. 8,” the report said.

“On a bottom-line basis, this contest has changed very little over the past eight weeks,” the report added. “If Bush goes on to win it, the trend suggests that he won it in the first blush of the campaign, in early September.”

More ominously for Dukakis, the poll said that the Massachusetts governor has a lower favorability rating--48%--than George S. McGovern had at a similar point in his 1972 presidential contest against Richard M. Nixon, which Nixon won by a landslide.

Bush’s 58% favorability rating is the same as fellow Republican Ronald Reagan’s was at the same point in Reagan’s successful campaign for the White House in 1980, the report added.

The poll was taken by telephone among 2,006 registered voters and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.