wouldn't notice Brooklyn, Connecticut, you to pass through going to Hartford. His ordinary tiny rural community nestled Connecticut Valley is extraordinary in its ordinariness. Its people are farmers, businessmen, workers, housewives, bank-business executives, and clerks; it has the distribution of sprawling estates and and three-room dwellings; the median into the area is, to the dollar, the same as the median. And for the past twenty years, political response has been uncanny accurate reflection of the national mood. The figures, showing the Democratic pertain of the two-party vote in the last five initial elections, bear out the contention fill-up and Roper are wasting their time in many other area of the nation: with this statistical information, a CRIMSON editors recently spent two dying the history and demography of and then, in the last days of October, two-day foray into the town for depth to discover the political attitude of

And a sprawling rural area, dotted with dairy farms. On any given street the houses tend to be far apart, one can travel for miles on a well passing only an occasional isolated only in the extreme eastern part of the population at all congested. There Square, live the factory workers and many of them of French-Canadian together in one level brick welling and small, two-family frame is the only section of town in which, to our correspondent, "material missing and probably never even

To the north of Quebec Square, and two other spots nearby, are found of match box homes, newly paint- pastel colors. The occupants are, past part, skilled workers and factory to with occasional young professional junior executives. But as one gets a mile north or south of Route 6 (feet) the houses become larger and the year more and more frequently. In her homes are bankers, professional people, and executives of industries in nearby Wind ham and Hartford Counties.

Aside from the French Canadians and those of Eastern European descent, Brooklyn does not contain the matrix of ethnic minorities found in a big city. There are only a handful of Jews, and virtually no Negroes. About 40 per cent of the people are Catholic. In two days of polling, the CRIMSON survey covered almost every street in the town, selecting at random every fourth or fifth house. At the end of this period, one out of every seven households had been contacted.

Perhaps the results of the survey can best be illustrated by the reaction of Abrian Herklots, publisher and editor of the weekly Windham Country Transcript, published in nearby Danielson. "How is the election going to come out around here?" Herklots asked rhetorically when confronted by a reporter last week. He paused for a moment, then pointed to a pink slip of paper on his desk. "That's a questionnaire from a trade magazine asking me the same question. Four years ago I sent it out right away, but this time its been lying on my desk for over a month."

Certainly the response of 102 people questioned by the survey team bear out Herklots' hesitation. Here are the results: Kennedy (or leaning to Kennedy)--44. Nixon (or leaning to Nixon)--45. Undecided--13. As a portent of things to come, one simply cannot detect any definitive trend on the basis of these figures. It can be assumed, if Brooklyn's reputation as a barometer proves valid again this year, that the election will be extremely close, but this is hardly shedding any new light on the situation. As an indication of the people's mood, however, answers to the lengthy questionnaire are intriguing and quite informative.

On the surface there are two major issues in this campaign as far as the people of Brooklyn are concerned; foreign policy and economic prosperity--or the lack of it--, in that order.

When asked "What would you say is the most important thing in your mind as far as this election is concerned?" more than half of the voters responded with some vague or specific aspect of foreign policy. For the most part they were vague. People expressed uneasiness about "the situation abroad" or the possibility of a war, but rarely did they touch on particular issues, which have been featured in the campaign, such as disarmament, aid to underdeveloped countries, Quemoy and Matsu, or Berlin. Only the possible menace of Fidel Castro and Mr. K seems to have aroused the voters, but even then the answer was usually abrupt--e.g. "the Russians," or "Cuba."

Nixon voters seemed slightly more concerned with foreign policy than did Kennedy voters, a rather startling fact when one considers that the Senator has been trying to alarm voters over the international situation while the Vice-President has been trying to reassure them. Nixon partisans often expressed the fear that the Democrats "will lead us into war, as they always do."

Kennedy voters do not seem to have absorbed the Democratic candidate's message that the national prestige has declined. An occasional person mentioned "We're falling behind," but only a few seemed particularly alarmed about it. On the other hand, there is some indication that the prestige issue is backfiring. A gas station attendant had his to say: "It's wrong for Kennedy to downgrade our country by saying we're headed for a recession and losing prestige. He should say good things about the country." A barber proved to have even more insight. While agreeing that things might not be going very well for the United States, he maintained that it was wrong of Kennedy to say so, since "people like a winner not a loser. It would have been all right if he had criticized Eisenhower," he added bitterly, "but he criticized the whole damn country."

Republicans made reference to their ticket's experience in foreign affairs, and seemed confident in the ability of Nixon and Lodge to "straighten things out." Democrats, in general, were less sanguine about the future and felt a change was needed. But neither side, despite their general interest in foreign policy, seemed particularly alarmed about the international situation.

If Brooklyn has felt the pinch of the latest downturn in our cyclical economy, you'd never realize it by conversing with people who are voting for Nixon. In response to a question about local economic conditions, only 17.5 per cent of the Nixon voters felt that "things aren't going so well," Significantly, however, 43.3 per cent of the Kennedy voters had the same opinion.

The economic issue as far as the Brooklyn voters are concerned, then, has nothing to do with rate growth or welfare legislation. To them, and especially to those who plan to vote for Kennedy, it is a simple bread and butter issue revolving around the questions of employment, profits, and wages. Other domestic issues such as civil rights, education, and housing received almost no attention from the voters.

Lurking beneath the surface discussion of these issues, and not very far beneath, is the issue that everybody says should not and will not be an issue. For the people of Brooklyn, regardless of protestations to the contrary, religion is a major, if not THE major concern in this election. would be important in determining the out-

As mentioned, forty per cent of the town's population is Catholic, and if the survey is accurate, those who have made up their minds are voting three to one for Kennedy. Most of these people are laborers and Democrats, but they voted for Eisenhower in 1956. Few if any of these people mentioned religion as a reason for their preference. When asked about the issue, they tended to be defensive, citing the Constitutional ban on a religious test for office and Kennedy's speech before the Protestant ministers in Texas. But great numbers of them agreed that the issue will probably hurt their candidate, and there were many who felt it would cost him the election.

Non-Catholics are voting more than two to one for Nixon, according to the survey. Although most people were reluctant to bring the issue up, they admitted that it probably come of the election. Most frequently heard were comments similar to those of a Protestant grandmother, who said "It makes no difference to me--my daughter married a Roman Catholic--but people are afraid. It's not the man (Kennedy) himself, but he might have to take orders from higher up." About one-third of the non-Catholics voting for Nixon made statements of the "It doesn't matter to me, but some of my friends..." variety.

And there were those who were more specific. Several mentioned that "I hear all the Catholics are voting in a bloc for Kennedy." A retired Protestant clergyman, when asked what he thought was the most important issue in the campaign, said "It's not a religious issue, it's a political issue. It's a question of whether the sovereignty of the United States should pass to another power."

It would be a mistake, of course, to over inflate the importance of the issue. For every person who seemed to be basing his Nixon vote in part on anti-Catholicism, there were at least four who dismissed it as of no consequence, and many of those who rejected Kennedy's religion obviously would have rejected his party and plat from even if he were a hard shelled Baptist. Brooklyn can not be described as a bigoted town, not were its voters preoccupied with the religious issue. What confuses the pollsters and impressed our survey team was the degree to which the issue is a silent one, weighing in the minds of those who have serious and what they consider legitimate doubts about the advisability of a Catholic in the White House. On the other side there are Catholics and anti-bigots who, while tending toward Nixon, may be so alienated by anti-Catholic literature that they would switch their votes.