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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Selectric II who wrote (48794)	10/18/2000 11:14:03 PM
From: Frank Griffin	Respond to of 769667

Dear Subscriber, In the instant news Internet era, its often hard to tell people that they have to wait for something. Still, for all those who want to know the real public reaction to last nights Presidential Debate, youll just have to wait. Snap polls and TV focus groups provide entertainment but little more. At Rasmussen Research, well interview 1,000 Likely Voters from across the nation on Wednesday and Thursday nights. These interviews, part of our Portrait of America (POA) Presidential Tracking Poll, will give us a good look at the voting publics reaction to the debates. Results will be posted Friday morning. To interpret those results, its important to remember where we were before the St. Louis debate. Governor Bush went into St. Louis on a roll. Over the two previous weeks, and as a result of the two previous debates, Bush had begun to pull away from Vice President Al Gore. In the popular vote, the debate period saw Bushs lead grow from a point or two to a 7-point margin. This trend also shifted the Electoral College map in the Republican direction. There were several reasons for Bushs gains. Perhaps most significantly, the public perception of Al Gore took a turn for the worse following the first two debates. The Vice Presidents favorable/unfavorable rating tumbled more than 10 points. Equally damaging, the public now sees Al Gore as further to the left politically than they did before the first debate. America, politically, is a center-right country. When 47% of voters see Al Gore as somewhat or very liberal, hes in trouble. Another interesting tidbit our surveys indicated was the changing perception of American investors. Before the first debate, these voters favored Bush 46% to 40%. On the eve of the final debate, they favored Bush 51% to 35%. This trend may have resulted from Gores rhetoric against the wealthy and big business. If so, the Vice President might not mind losing ground among investors if he could gain ground among the somewhat larger group of non-investors. However, that didnt happen. Before the first debate, Gore led by a 43% to 41% margin among non-investors. Currently, he and Bush each attract 43% of the vote from non-investors. Whatever the reason, when the candidates took the stage in St. Louis, the election was clearly Bushs to lose. Al Gore needed to do something to turn the race around. When we take a look at the numbers on Friday morning, well be looking to see if the Vice-President accomplished this goal. If Bush leads by 7 points or more on Friday, his momentum was not stopped and he will become our next President. In fact, while pundits have been writing about the closest election in 40 years, a continuing Bush surge would change that to the closest election since 1996! After all, Bill Clinton won by only 8 points in the popular vote that year. On the other hand, if Fridays numbers show the race even or close to even, Al Gore will have made tremendous gains and be in a position to win it all. Then, we might, in fact, find this to be the closest election since the Ford-Carter match-up in 1976. So, while I hate to say it, youll have to wait until Friday to find out who won the debate. In the meantime, if you want even more information from our state and national polling data, sign up for our premium e-mail service today. This new service allows you to obtain detailed demographic information on our state-by-state and national tracking polls. LINK: www.dxmarket.com/worldnetdaily/dir/6.html Thank you for your interest, Scott Rasmussen President Rasmussen Research Presidential Tracking Poll: www.portraitofamerica.com/html/poll-804.html Electoral Tracking Poll: www.portraitofamerica.com/html/poll-1214.html College Football Poll: www.portraitofamerica.com/html/poll-1419.html To unsubscribe to this newsletter click below: www.portraitofamerica.com/newsletter/remnews.cfm