One of the chief reasons for Democratic optimism in the coming national elections is the strength the party is showing in the race for the Governorship of New York. Until this year, the Democrats have lost four of the last five state-wide elections in the Empire State, by margins ranging up to a million. But the straw poll of the New York Daily News, which has never been wrong, indicates a victory for Democrat Averell-Harriman over Republican Irving Ives by a quarter-million votes. And the Daily News is supporting Ives.

In the face of the Daily News poll, New York Republicans have panicked. At their request, President Eisenhowever made a special trip through New York City, Ives clinging desperately to his coat-tails. Democrats are confident of victory, and the Daily News pollsters are defying anyone to take the wind out of their straws.

There is one certainty about the New York election; it will not be decided on the personal appeal of the Candidates. Both Harriman and Ives are as colorless as they are capable. Harriman, who held a string of diplomatic and cabinet posts under the New and Fair Deals, is too timid and too patrician to campaign effectively. He was chosen as nominee partly because he could write his own campaign check (his grandfather built the Union Pacific), and partly because his success as a businessman would attract conservative voters.

But while Harriman was never expected to cause a stir, Ives' performance has been the biggest disappointment of the campaign. His best effort so far has been to link his opponent with ancient scandals involving some of Harriman's financial interests. Ives, a sophomore Senator who specializes in labor relations (he was Dean of the Labor School at Cornell) won his nomination because of his large pluralities in the Senatorial elections of 1946 and 1952. It was forgotten that both were years of a strong Republican trend.

The Republican chance to keep the Governorship depends upon the success of the formula that has brought them victory over the last twelve years. The formula, which shows a keen insight into the New York electorate, is compounded of two elements: ethnic and economic. New York has a mature, industrial economy (ninety percent of its citizens live in or around cities). Having accepted state socialism since 1910, New York voters expect their parties to offer the full bundle of social welfare programs. By matching the Democrats hospital for hospital and school for school, the Republicans have tried to criminate economics as a state issue.

New York also has the biggest, most varied collection of nationality groups in America. Minority groups--Jews, Negroes, Irish, Italians, Germans and Poles make up a majority of the state's population. Although all are normally Democratic, these groups have divided sharply over some of the most important issues affecting voting, from entry into World War II, through intensity of anti-Communism, to, most recently, McCarthyism. In general, the Catholic nationalities respond one way toward these issue, the Jews and Negroes the other. For the past sixteen years, it has been a fact in New York politics that when Jews and Negroes go into the Democratic column, Catholics get out. And vice-versa.

Thus, by neutralizing economics, Republican strategy has aggravated the issues affecting ethnic sensitivity, allowing the Republicans to sit back comfortably and watch the Democrats tear themselves apart.

This year is different, for ethnic issues have yielded to economic ones. Although there are literally millions of rabid McCarthy supporters in New York, they have no candidate (Ives is one of the few Republican Senators who has opposed McCarthy from the beginning). The Moscow radio is not supporting the Democratic candidate for Governor (as it did in 1946); and both parties have judiciously balanced their tickets with the right proportions of the various ethnic groups.

At the same time, economic complaints have cropped up that the Republicans have not been able to quell. Unemployment, for example, is up to 250,000. But most important, the Democrats have succeeded in convincing the New York City voters that the upstate-dominated Republican legislature is cheating the city out of its fair share of social-welfare grants. In short, the Republican formula is weak this year. If enough Catholic voters forget that Harriman was part of the "twenty years of treason," and remember that he will increase their school and compensation grants, they may not take their usual walk from the Democratic party.

In spite of Democratic portents, however, Ives should still win--by a whisker. This is because there are not enough registered voters in New York City, Harriman's stronghold, to offset the Republican edge in the more contented upstate areas. The key votes belong to the two million upstate voters who don't have to register. If they all vote, Ives will win. And what may well drive them to the polls are the very portents that the Democrats, their natural enemies, are running ahead.

Maybe the Daily News is not so dumb, after all.