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Morning News

Gore Maintains Lead in Latest CNN Tracking Poll of Likely Voters

Aired September 18, 2000 - 11:29 a.m. ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: The U.S. presidential election is just 50 days, 5-0 days, from today. With the latest numbers from the CNN/"USA Today"/Gallup tracking poll, we check in now with Gallup's editor in chief, Frank Newport.

Frank, good morning.

FRANK NEWPORT, EDITOR IN CHIEF, GALLUP POLL: Good morning, Daryn.

You know, some people ask us why we bother to track the race, and I'll tell you a couple of reasons. One is if we didn't do it scientifically like this, there would be a lot of attempts to characterize it anyhow. People would say, oh, I think so and so is ahead. And second, it's interesting: People like to know how the race is going given the millions of dollars and attention it's been through.

Our goal: let's see how the race is. This is our latest tracking estimate through Saturday, and you can see the race here: 49 percent for Gore, 41 for Bush. And we want to show you for a moment where Nader is at three and Buchanan at one, very low numbers. The reason is the Commission on Presidential Debates say that you have to average as a third-party candidate 15 percent in five national polls to get in the debates. Right now, unless something highly dramatic happens, neither Nader nor Buchanan, it looks like, will be in those debates.

Now, the change over time, we've really not seen a lot of fluctuation. The numbers go up and they go down, but basically Gore's been at the high 40s -- 49, 48, 47 percent in all of our polling. Bush has dropped down to where he's been in roughly the low 40s -- 42, 41, 43 percent, as you can see, across time.

They go up and down some, but basically, Gore has been sustaining this type of small, but sometimes significant lead for as long as we have been tracking, at least over the last week to a week and a half, and no major change in sight when we look at it.

Now, everybody's talking about the Olympics are going to distract people. But so far, we're on track right where we were in '96 in terms of people paying attention to the race.

Look here, that red line is how many people are paying quite a lot of attention in '96. The yellow line is how many people are paying quite a lot of attention this year. And the reason they're on top of each other it's almost identical. What we'll be tracking to see is over the next week or two, if that yellow line begins to sag down during the Olympics. Probably, that wouldn't be great news for George W. Bush, because he's the one who's trying to bring those numbers up right now.

By the way, an interesting historical fact, Daryn and Bill, we wanted to show you here. Back in 1988, George Bush the elder was ahead of Dukakis by exactly the same margin that Gore is ahead of Bush W. today: 49 percent to 41 percent. Now, the bad news for "W" is, of course, that Bush maintained that lead and went on to win. W is hoping, of course, this year that there will be a bigger change and the race will get a little more mixed up and it will be competitive, or that he'll win, of course, by election day.

Daryn, that's where we stand.

KAGAN: All right. Frank, thanks a lot.

You're going to want to stay tuned because we have another numbers story coming up, and we know how you like those numbers.

NEWPORT: I'll be watching avidly.

KAGAN: OK, you stay with us.

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