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Gore, Bush tied in new poll of likely voters |
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August 22, 2000
WASHINGTON (AP) - Al Gore and George W. Bush campaigned in the battleground states of the American Midwest while a new poll of likely voters suggested the U.S. presidential race is very close. "We said all along that it's going to be a close election," Bush communications director Karen Hughes said on the CNN television network. "We expect it to be a close, hard-fought election all the way to November." The CNN-USA Today-Gallup poll had Gore of the Democratic Party at 47 percent, Bush of the Republican Party at 46 percent, Green Party candidate Ralph Nader at 3 percent and Reform Party candidate Pat Buchanan at 2 percent. Hughes reiterated the Bush campaign's plans for debates, and Gore's campaign manager immediately tried to up the ante. "We are going to participate in a record number of five presidential and vice presidential debates," Hughes said on the television program "Fox News Sunday." She was referring to a recent campaign proposal that the presidential candidates debate three times and the vice presidential rivals debate twice. "We're game. We'll start this week. In fact, we'll do five times five if they'll give us the opportunity," Donna Brazile, Gore's campaign manager, said on Fox. "We'll start negotiations tomorrow." The Commission on Presidential Debates has proposed three debates between the presidential candidates in October. The commission plan is for one vice presidential debate that month. The commission proposals are always subject to negotiations by the candidates. Bush aides cautioned the surge Gore has gotten in the polls after his party's national convention last week could be short-lived. The CNN-USA Today-Gallup poll of 697 likely voters taken Friday and Saturday had an error margin of 4 percentage points. That same poll right before the convention showed Bush 16 points ahead of Gore, 55 percent to 39 percent. Gore's campaign chairman, William Daley, said on NBC television's "Meet The Press: "We are encouraged that people obviously listened to the vice president (in his acceptance speech) on Thursday evening. ... There are issues that we've got to address, and he was specific about them. And I think that's what people reacted to." The CNN-USA Today-Gallup poll is one of several that have indicated Gore made significant gains in public opinion after the convention. A Newsweek magazine poll released Saturday showed Gore ahead at 48 percent to 42 percent, but that measured all registered voters, which tends to give stronger results to the Democrats. Gore, the current vice president, pulled even in the CNN-USA Today-Gallup poll by building about a 20-point lead among women, while Bush has about the same size lead among men. Both campaigns are starting TV ad campaigns in key states to kick off the fall campaign. Meanwhile, Gore campaign manager Brazile termed "ridiculous" an editorial in a black New York City weekly, the Amsterdam News, that vice presidential nominee Joseph Lieberman, an Orthodox Jew, was put on the ticket to get money from the Jewish community worldwide. Gore and Lieberman are wrapping up a 400-mile (645-kilometer) boat trip down the Mississippi River by focusing on targeted tax cuts for the middle class that would give breaks for child care, elder care and college tuition. Bush, meanwhile, is criticizing the administration of President Bill Clinton on military affairs, proposing to spend dlrs 1.3 billion on pay raises, schools, and veterans' health care. "A volunteer military has only two paths. It can lower its standards to fill its ranks. Or it can inspire the best and brightest to join and stay," Bush said in remarks prepared for delivery Monday in Milwaukee. In addition, he was pledging "orderly and timely" withdrawal of troops from Bosnia and Kosovo, saying the administration has committed the United States to military confrontations that lack a direct national interest. Gore and Lieberman were getting back aboard their riverboat Monday to head to Hannibal, Missouri, the boyhood home of writer Mark Twain. Bush was to campaign in the states of Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, Louisiana and Florida in the coming week.
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