I.A. Lewis, 68; Director of the L.A. Times Poll

I. A. (Bud) Lewis, director of the Los Angeles Times Poll since its inception in 1979 and prior to that a respected pollster for CBS and NBC who was credited with conducting the first canvass of voters as they left their polling places, died Saturday.

Lewis was 68 and had been diagnosed with cancer earlier this month at Glendale Adventist Medical Center, where he died.

He came to the relatively new art of polling after writing for Dave Garroway on the original “Today” show. He delighted in telling colleagues how each day he would try to create accompanying dialogue for whatever antics had been sketched out for J. Fred Muggs, the chimpanzee Garroway used on the daytime talk and information show.

That was in 1956-57, a few years after he had returned from Germany, where he had been a civilian employee of the Armed Forces Network working as a news writer and bureau chief.

He then worked for United Press International and for Armed Forces Radio before joining the Garroway unit at NBC.

Lewis, born Irwin Albert Lewis, next joined the NBC election unit and became its director of polling in 1966 and director of elections in 1969.

Frank Jordan, former director of the NBC election unit, said Lewis--as director of polling--was the first to station his workers outside precincts asking voters how they had marked their ballots.

That was in the off-presidential year elections of 1966 and the samplings were taken in U.S. Senate races in a few selected states. The results provided an early, accurate edge in predicting the outcome of races. Exit polls since have become a staple of the industry, sometimes angering candidates who believe that West Coast voters may stay at home when they believe elections have already been decided by their counterparts in earlier time zones.

In 1976, Lewis joined CBS News as director of polling for the CBS News/New York Times Poll, leaving for the Roper (polling) Organization the following year.

Two years later he came to this newspaper.

A graduate of Princeton University and a veteran of Air Force Intelligence service in the China-Burma-India theater during World War II, Lewis is survived by his wife, Allison, and four daughters.

Funeral services are pending at Forest Lawn Glendale.