THE PHENOMENON OF DEMOCRATS for Nixon has spread for beyond its birthplace in John Connally's Texas, and has established a firm foothold deep in the heart of Cambridge.

The number of traditionally Democratic faculty members at both Harvard and MIT who have now moved to support Nixon either publicly or privately is larger than for any previous Republican candidate. And more significant than this, an amazingly large number of professors with old liberal credentials are on Nixon's side.

The reason the professors cite for their switch is not, in general, a love for Nixon. Most have strong hesitations about all of his domestic policies and some of his foreign policies. But all see George McGovern as the greater of evils.

There are two main reasons for the anti-McGovern sentiment: the scholars feel that McGovern is incompetent, principally on the basis of his troubles with his campaign staff; and they believe that the foreign policies that McGovern advocates would precipitate a sharp decline in the international strategic power and influence of the United States.

"I think McGovern's basically a total incompetent," Richard E. Pipes, professor of History and director of the Russian Research Center, said Saturday. "As a candidate, everything he has done since the Democratic Convention has been incompetent. His speeches are annoyingly provincial."

"I don't think the man is capable of being the mayor of a major city, let alone President of the United States."

Pipes is a registered Democrat, who voted for Humphrey in 1968 and for every Democratic presidential candidate before him. He says he would have voted for any candidate the Democrats put up, except McGovern.

Out of the major contenders for the Democratic nomination, Pipes favored Senator Henry Jackson (D-Wash.), and he ran as a delegate for Jackson to the convention, along with James Q. Wilson, chairman of the Government Department.

Wilson is one of the large group of people who, like George Meany, will not say for the record who they are voting for. But the implication is clear from the denunciations they heaped upon McGovern. Although Wilson refrains entirely from commenting on the strengths or weaknesses of either candidate, when asked about the race he waxes scholarly and presents an analytical judgment befitting a professor of Government.

"My assessment of the situation is this. In this campaign the things that McGovern had to do to win the nomination have made it impossible for him to win the election. He had to make a strong and striking appeal to mobilize what you could call 'movement' political forces, rather than establishment ones. He had to make strong commitments, moral commitments in order to win their allegiance. Then when confronted with the election, he had an albatross around his neck."

Wilson says that these factors, and not McGovern's later problems such as the Eagleton fiasco, have been the cause of his failure. He believes the campaign has not been able to produce any substantive issues, and sees "not much difference" between the two candidates' positions on Vietnam.

OTHER PROFESSORS ARE MORE silent. For instance, Adam B. Ulam, professor of Government and another registered Democrat, says simply, "I am not voting for McGovern." Asked why, Ulam says the questions are too complicated and grumbles something about foreign policy.

Ithiel de Sola Pool, professor of Political Science at MIT and a Vietnam adviser under several presidents, goes into more detail on just which McGovern foreign policy stands the scholars find disturbing.

"The election of McGovern would create real dangers in the international situation," Pool says. "If the United States followed McGovern's policies there'd be no reason for the other side to negotiate anything. He says he will reduce arms and cut back troop levels. If we followed these policies there would be no possibility of a detente."

An active campaigner in the past six Democratic presidential drives. Pool says he is forced to switch parties in this election. "It is the party that has turned around," he argues, "not me."