Major Candidates Are Rejected By Most at Harvard, Polls Report

Harvard and Radcliffe students are overwhelmingly unenthusiastic about the Nixon, Humphrey, Wallace choice for president in 1968, according to two polls released yesterday.

A WHRB poll, based on interviews with two-thirds of the 1500 Harvard and Radcliffe freshmen at registration, found that 60 per cent rejected the three major party candidates.

A more casual survey by the Harvard-Radcliffe Young Democrats of 800 College and Radcliffe students--including 300 freshmen--found even more disaffiliates. About 80 per cent said they wouldn't vote for any of the candidates--major or minor--if they could vote. There was no significant difference between freshman and upperclass responses.

Of the 80 per cent of the YD pollees who said they would support no candidate, three-quarters indicated that they had been supporters of Sen. Eugene J. McCarthy, about five per cent each had favored the late Senator Robert F. Kennedy '48 and Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller. The other 15 per cent said they didn't like any candidate.

The WHRB poll revealed that McCarthy is still the favored candidate among the members of the Class of 1972. Twenty-seven per cent said they would write-in the Minnesota senator's name rather than vote for any of the three major party candidates. Vice President Humphrey, who received the highest vote of the official candidates, polled 24 per cent.

An additional 12 per cent indicated that they wouldn't vote for president, even if given the chance. Nine per cent favored Peace and Freedom candidate Eldridge Cleaver, the Black Panther minister of defense. WHRB Poll of the Class of '72 Candidate  Per Cent Nixon  14 Humphrey  24 Wallace  2 Cleaver  9 Halstead  1 Write-ins McCarthy  27 Rockefeller  3 Wouldn't Vote  12