That eight-point advantage is statistically unchanged from last week’s NEWSWEEK poll, in which the Vice President held a 10-point lead (the polls have a margin of error of plus or minus four points).
The critical post-Labor Day national polls now paint a picture of a race that ranges from a dead heat to a significant Gore lead. Gore has a slight edge in the Gallup/CNN/USA Today poll, the Fox/Opinion Dynamics poll and a significant lead in the Zogby poll. No major poll show Bush ahead, but the ABC/Washington Post poll shows the race dead even and the CNN/Time poll shows a Gore lead of only one point. NEWSWEEK’s pollsters believe the differences in the polling can be explained by how questions are asked and in what order they are asked.
The race continues to be highly fluid: the NEWSWEEK poll shows that a significant 30 percent of registered voters say they haven’t made up their mind about how to vote. The poll also shows Pat Buchanan and Ralph Nader far behind, at three percent and one percent respectively.
There are a number of factors that account for Gore’s lead. He appears to be winning the strong support of those 50 and older (51 percent vs. 37 percent for Bush). Gore also lead among college-educated voters, 51 percent to 38 percent, according to the NEWSWEEK poll.
Bush gained some ground with his plan for prescription-drug coverage. But he still trails Gore by 28 percent to 51 percent as the candidate who would better handle the issue of “helping seniors pay for prescription drugs.” Last week, Bush trailed by a wider margin of 26 percent to 58 percent.
Neither candidate appears to have been hurt or helped significantly by last week’s campaign controversy over the debate schedule. Registered voters are only slightly more likely to hold Bush more accountable (33 percent) that they are Gore (27 percent) for the squabbling over the debates.
Bush did some slight damage to his campaign with his off-color remark about New York Times reporter Adam Clymer. Some 27 percent of all voters and 12 percent of Bush supporters say the gaffe lowered their opinion of him. And voters are now more likely to criticize the tone of the campaign than they were in late August. Sixty percent now say that at least one of the two campaigns is “too negative or nasty” compared with 53 percent right after the elections.
The NEWSWEEK poll of 756 registered voters was conducted on Sept. 7 and 8 by Princeton Survey Research Associates. Of those voters, 595 identified themselves as likely voters.
