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Morning News

Gallup Poll: Bush Holds Slight Lead as Race Tightens

Aired November 6, 2000 - 10:09 a.m. ET

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

BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: As the race barrels toward that finish line, it still remains in the same deadlock that has defined the race since roughly Labor Day. Polling has been a huge issue this year, in part because the race is indeed so tight.

Our Gallup Poll editor-in-chief Frank Newport now live in Princeton with the latest on this.

Coming down to wire. Hey, Frank, good morning.

FRANK NEWPORT, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, GALLUP POLL: Good morning, Bill, Indeed it is. A little tightening, which is not unusual as we get close to actual election day.

Let's show you what we found in our CNN/"USA Today"/Gallup tracking over the last week or week and a half.

George W. Bush has been ahead. But he has always been ahead by just a small margin, October 23rd to 25th, we pulled it across in discreet three-day increments. As of this weekend, for Saturday and Sunday, we interview over 2,300 likely voters, George W. Bush 47, Al Gore 45 percent. Really too close to call in a statistical point of view.

Let's look in a little more detail at our latest two-day estimate. One thing we wanted to show you is Nader is at 4 percent. He was at five. He is down a point. We will come back to him in just a second.

Look over here, only 3 percent of all likely voters we talked to this weekend still hold out as undecided. That is as low as we've seen all fall. It has been five and four percent. It may be that one or two points of those people are going over to Al Gore.

Now, strength of support, this is interesting for a couple of reasons: Bush people, 76 percent, say they support Bush strongly; Gore voters, 69 percent. So Bush people have just the slightest more enthusiasm. But one point we are making here is that note that a quarter or more of all likely voters still only support their choice moderately. Now that's what we expect, actually it is a little lower than usual. But still that indicates there is some room for these people to change their mind even in the last 24-36 hours of the campaign. Nader, well, as we have been showing you, we have been tracking this for the last week or so. When we asked Nader voters, 4 percent of them, who would you vote for, if you did vote for Nader, 51 percent say Al Gore. That's the key number. Why? If these Nader people, at the last moment, say. well, I am going to go back and vote for someone else, Al Gore obviously would pick up more of the vote than anybody else. And if it is 1 or 2 percent in a very close race could make a difference.

We heard Jonathan Karl talk about turnout. We anticipate we could have a slightly higher turnout, at least than we did in 1976. Look at this, 67 percent were following the race closely at the end of that race. Now it's been up to 75 percent this year. The last couple of times we have asked, it is actually about over the last week.

When we put this into our modeling here at Gallup, it does suggests there is a potential there for somewhat higher turnout than the less than 50 percent that we saw back in 1996. That's where the public stand as of this weekend.

Back to you, Bill.

HEMMER: Frank, quick clarification, the past week sample we use through the folks there at Gallup has gone up dramatically. Do you find historically a larger sample does indeed predict more accuracy?

NEWPORT: Yes, every year, when we have done this tracking, we have increased. In fact, Gallup, for many years, in last sample, certainly increased it. Yes, statistically speaking, everything else being equal, the larger the sample, Bill, the smaller the margin of error. Margin of error is 2 percent as opposed to three or four. So, if you can afford it, all pollsters would love to do more rather than fewer.

HEMMER: All makes sense. Thank you, Frank. We will check back in later. Frank Newport in Princeton.

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