<P> The Gallup Organization took an opinion poll at the end of April and found that 74 per cent agreed with what Powell had said in his speech; 15 per cent disagreed . 69 per cent felt Heath was wrong to sack Powell and 20 per cent believed Heath was right . Before his speech Powell was favoured to replace Heath as Conservative leader by one per cent, with Reginald Maudling favoured by 20 per cent; after his speech 24 per cent favoured Powell and 18 per cent Maudling. 83 per cent now felt immigration should be restricted (75 per cent before the speech) and 65 per cent favoured anti-discrimination legislation . </P> <P> Powell defended his speech on 4 May through an interview for the Birmingham Post: "What I would take' racialist' to mean is a person who believes in the inherent inferiority of one race of mankind to another, and who acts and speaks in that belief . So the answer to the question of whether I am a racialist is' no'--unless, perhaps, it is to be a racialist in reverse . I regard many of the peoples in India as being superior in many respects--intellectually, for example, and in other respects--to Europeans . Perhaps that is over-correcting ." </P> <P> According to most accounts, the popularity of Powell's perspective on race may have played a decisive contributory factor in the Conservatives' surprise victory in the 1970 general election, although Powell became one of the most persistent rebels opposing the subsequent Heath government . In "exhaustive research" on the election, the American pollster Douglas Schoen and University of Oxford academic R.W. Johnson believed it "beyond dispute" that Powell had attracted 2.5 million votes to the Conservatives, but nationally the Conservative vote had increased by only 1.7 million since 1966 . In his own constituency at that election--his last in Wolverhampton--his majority of 26,220 and a 64.3 per cent share of the vote were then the highest of his career . </P> <P> Powell reflected on the speech in an interview in 1977 when the interviewer asked him "nine years after the speech, are we still in your view on a kind of funeral pyre?: </P>

I see the river tiber foaming with much blood