POLITICAL BRIEFING

THE NUMBER THAT COUNTS: Republicans worried by polls showing President Bush just barely winning--or losing--when up against an unnamed Democratic nominee have found solace in the substantial margins by which he leads any actual Democratic foe in the same surveys. But that apparent silver lining also may be an illusion, argues GOP pollster Bill McInturff.

The real gauge of the President’s precarious position, McInturff said, is the huge percentage of Americans who think that the country is on the wrong track.

In 1988, he noted, private GOP polls found that nearly three-quarters of those who thought the country was moving in the right direction voted for Bush; conversely, he won just one-third of those who thought the country was heading down the wrong track. That pattern augurs badly for 1992. In McInturff’s latest survey, 73% of those polled said the country was on the wrong track, far more than at any point in 1988.

“We are now close to the October, 1980, levels of pessimism, and you know what happened to the incumbent President then,” he said, referring to Ronald Reagan’s defeat of Jimmy Carter. “If wrong track stays above 55%, the election will be too close to call, no matter what the ballot tests say.”