American Voters 2000: Who's Still Swinging, Who's Decided, and Why?

Transcript

Stephen Hess: Good morning and welcome to the second presentation at Brookings of the Pew Research Center's American Voters 2000. Some of you will recall back in July we did a similar program. The survey was called, "Who's Distracted, Dissatisfied, or Just Don't Care?" And now we are back by popular demand. Actually, the popular demand is from the three commentators who had so much fun that we asked Andy Kohut to come back and let us have a crack at his next survey, which has been embargoed until today, and you will have it in your kit.

A few business matters. The full transcript of this event will be on the Brookings website, www.brookings.edu by Friday, by tomorrow, as well as a link to the complete survey at the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, www.people-press.org.

Also, the survey results that are pertaining to the importance of religion in the election will be examined in detail at a companion of that next Wednesday at Brookings, which we are calling, "God-Fearing Voters, God-Fearing Candidates: How Important Will Religion Really Be in the 2000 Election?" And you can RSVP to that through our website. That analysis will also be available and transcribed on our website.

The format of the program will be the same as the one in July, that is Andy Kohut, the director of the Pew Research for the People and the Press will make a presentation of what he sees as significant findings of this survey for as long as he wishes, 10-15 minutes. Andy, as you know, has been the past president of the American Association of Public Opinion Research. He was at one point the president of the Gallup organization. We are always very happy to have him with us.

The commentators will start. We will have the three commentators that we had last time, which I think of as the Brookings political swat-team. Tom Mann is a senior fellow who was our distinguished director of Governmental Studies and the editor of Campaign Finance Reform. My finger in the air survey convinces me that he has just taken first place as the most quoted presidential election analyst in the United States. And we will be joined as soon as he finishes his column, which may be in two or three minutes, by E.J. Dionne, Jr. E.J. is one of those Americans who have to work two jobs. He is a senior fellow at Brookings by day, and he writes a column for The Washington Post, which they also syndicate, at night. I say "at night," I guess night extends for a few more minutes. We also were very fortunate to add -- oh, I should say I am the third "Brookings-ite," Stephen Hess by name. I am the senior fellow in point of continuous service at Brookings, which is my claim to fame. We also have the joy of welcoming our friend, the nonresident senior fellow at Brookings, Charles O. Jones, who is emeritus professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin and past president of the American Political Science association, and author of Passages to the Presidency.

I would say we spared no expense to have Chuck with us. Truth in advertising for Brookings events, it cost us nothing either. Chuck, we caged him knowing that he was coming to town tomorrow to give a paper at The Wilson Center, a very interesting paper on the nexus between presidential candidate agendas and congressional agendas.

Also, I will turn it over to Andy. We will then comment at will on Andy's survey. He will have an opportunity to respond to us. And at some point, we will open it for questions and comments from the audience. That is our schedule for this morning.

Andrew Kohut: Thank you, Steve. Getting right into it, I take the Gore lead very seriously, not only because we polled 2,000 registered voters and found one, but also because of what the other polls are showing. I am a great believer in looking across the polls because I think it is the best measure of the breadth and stability of public opinion or the lack thereof.

I follow the Dick Scammon rule, which is you read the polls when there are a lot of them just the way you judge diving, you throw out the high and you throw out the low, and then you look at the rest. Throwing out the high would mean taking away Newsweek, which had 47-39, Gore/Bush and throwing away the low would be throwing Newsweek's corporate owner, The Washington Post/ABC Poll, 45-45.

The rest of these polls, if you put them on a common base, which is registered voters with one leaner, are amazingly similar. Pew has 47-41. Gallup has about 48-41, if you take an average of their moving average over this period. Bloomberg Prints and Survey Research is 46-40. The New York Times, if you go and get their one leaner, the result was 46-42. NBC is 45-43 and Fox is 45-43. There are six polls done with comparable methodologies and four of them have -- I may have mis-counted that, one, two, three, four -- yes, four have statistically significant margins for Gore and two have Gore leads but within the margin of error.

Now, this is the reverse of what we saw in June and July when the polls were mostly showing that if you put them on this comparable basis, a Bush lead or they were showing it even. I take this expression of public opinion more seriously than the June/July polls because more voters are now in place, and I will talk to you about that as it is expressed in our survey.

And, secondly, more people are paying attention. When we gave our presentation here in July, only 46 percent said they had given a lot of thought to the election. In the survey that we conducted in the last week in August and the first week of September or through September 11th, 59 percent said they had given a lot of thought to the election. So, that is a big difference. People are paying attention. So, those are two reasons to take more seriously the state of public opinion with Bush ahead or even with Gore.

I will talk a little bit about what I think the limits of the Gore lead are, but one of the things that occurred to me as I was preparing these remarks is that this is the fourth election cycle in which we have used the voter typology. And just a quick two sentence description of voter typology is classifying voters into homogenous groups based upon values and based upon party affiliation. And the first time we did it was in 1988. And our September 1988 survey found something very similar to what we found here, the incumbent Vice President, who had been trailing throughout the summer and into the conventions had a small lead. We had Bush ahead of Dukakis 46 to 40 percent, which is not too different than Gore ahead of Bush's son, 47 to 41 percent.

And I think there are a number of similarities in this poll between the race in '88 and the Bush lead and the Gore lead. There are also some very significant dissimilarities, but let's look at what is similar.

First, Gore has revived himself by unifying his base and at the same time his opponent's base as faltered somewhat -- or his opponent's support has faltered among key groups. This is exactly what happened in 1988. Gore gained demographically from July through September among Democrats, senior citizens, African-Americans, lower-income voters, and union members. Our typology shows Gore enjoying strong backing from socially conservative Democrats, who a year ago seemed inclined to defect to the GOP over the Clinton scandal. Not so here. They now express as much support for Gore as other Democratic groups in our value-based typology, New Democrats, the moderates, liberals, and the partisan poor.

A second similarity is an upsurge in what I see as the continuity factor. We saw it in September 1988, we see it now. Satisfaction with the state of the nation increased from June of this year from 47 to 52 percent, just as it increased from summer to fall in 1988. And more importantly than that small increase is how much more being satisfied with the state of the nation leads voters to say that they are inclined to vote for the incumbent Vice President. A year ago, when we looked at the people who said they were satisfied with the state of the nation, which was very high then, they were divided pretty much evenly, 49 percent for Gore, 46 percent for Bush. Today, they are at 58 percent for Gore, 32 percent for Bush. The incumbency factor or continuity seems to be making more of a difference.

There is another similarity. In 1988, we did not see the public having more confidence in Bush to handle the economy until the fall and the same thing has occurred here. Even though the stewardship of the economy has not been specifically an issue in the race, all of a sudden the public has clearly more confidence -- in our poll at least -- for Gore than Bush to deal with the economy.

I should add that while Clinton fatigue, the push for change is still there, people are -- in fact, there is some evidence in the survey that Clinton fatigue is growing, there are more people saying that they wish -- they are tired of the problems of the Clinton Administration. There are more people saying that they are glad that President Clinton can't run for a third term. But it is not holding back the increase in support for Gore because support for Gore is increasing both among the fatigued and among the un-fatigued elements of the electorate.

As Gore's base has come home, Republicans are backing Bush unevenly. As a consequence, the wide enthusiasm gap for Bush over Gore that was apparent before the conventions has disappeared. In fact, if you look on a straight party affiliation basis, 89 percent of Democrats are backing Gore, 87 percent are backing Bush. So, that is basically even. But usually Democrats are less loyal to Democratic candidates than Republicans are to Republican candidates. I think this is extraordinary.

And it also masks something that the typology shows and that is that Bush now gets really strong backing from staunch conservatives, people who are conservative, up and down the line and Republican. But he gets much less backing from populist Republicans who are not as affluent as other GOP groups and even somewhat less backing from moderate Republicans. This is apparent in our typology overall. It is apparent even when we filter these groups on party-affiliation and just look at people who self-identify as Republicans and not independents who lean Republican. Bush goes up to 95 among the conservatives but only hits -- the staunch conservatives but only hits about 80 percent among the populist. Obviously, calling himself "compassionate" hasn't really done it for a key element of his own party, and I will explain a little bit about that.

Demographically, Bush has lost his big lead among affluent voters, whites, men, and college graduates and that reflects what we see in the voter typology.

There are some clear limits and important limits to the 1988 comparison. The most important limit is that unlike in 1988, independents are still up for grabs. In 1988, Bush came into the fall with a lead -- I think a 48 to 42 percent lead among independents. But in 2000, we get 39 percent of independents for Gore and 38 percent for Bush. They are dead even.

And the groups that we have been tracking since the end of the primaries as the key swing groups are still up for grabs, younger women, older men, white Catholics, white mainline Protestants are still indecisive. They either are going with small margins for one of the candidates or they are dead even.

Among the independents without an ideological leaning in the typology, Bush continues to get stronger backing from younger, affluent, libertarian, new prosperity independents. And he holds a smaller advantage among less well-off disaffected. So, Bush still is doing reasonably well among the groups of independents who we identify as not having an ideology that pushes them to the Republican party or the Democratic party.

A second reason to think that this thing hasn't been really written is -- and that it might take another turn -- is that the percentage of voters who say they might change their mind and vote for the other candidate is as high as it was in June. Thirteen percent say they might end up voting for Gore and they are not now --13 percent of all voters. And 15 percent say they might end up voting for Bush but they are not supporting him now, that is 15 percent of all voters. That is almost exactly what we had two months ago. So, there is still quite a bit of fluidity. It is mostly in the middle of the electorate. One-third, more than one-third of independents say they might change their minds.

Clearly, issues have fueled Gore's gains. Voters are more focused on issues than they were in June. Fully 45 percent of the people said issues was the basis for picking Gore or Bush. That figure was 36 percent in June. Since the summer, Gore has shored up his dominant position on two of the top three issues, protecting social security and improving health care. But Bush has made some progress since the conventions on the other top-tier issue, education. But the public, amazingly, has as much confidence in Gore on taxes as in Bush. Obviously, taxes have been the centerpiece of Bush's economic plan.

Gore has done well with issues because the positions that he takes on the top issues are popular. Notably, the provision of a prescription drug benefit, which he was first on. It is favored by nine in 10 voters and even 84 percent of Republicans like that idea. In addition, voters strongly prefer targeted tax cuts, like the one Gore is promoting, to an across-the-board tax cut. And that has been consistently in poll after poll after poll.

However, two issues being championed by the Republicans have popular support: eliminating the inheritance tax, and allowing younger workers to invest some of their payroll taxes in private retirement accounts. So, there is some room, at least on these two issues, for Bush.

But the reason that this still remains an open race isn't so much issues. If it was issues, Gore would win. There is also the other part of the story and that is how the public, how voters evaluate these candidates in personal terms. And here Gore has made progress. He is better regarded in personal terms in many of the issues than he was in July. But Bush is still better regarded on a number of crucial dimensions. More see the Texas governor as a strong leader, which is a key personal judgment according to the analyses that we did of voter preferences. And Bush also continues to be seen as having more political courage than Gore.

In a lot of ways, Bush never put Gore completely away when he was leading in June and July and the reverse is the case here. Gore certainly hasn't put Bush away. This could take another turn and what Bush's opportunity is has to do with personal qualities. And that is where Gore's clear weakness is.

The push and pull between Gore's success with the issues and Bush's advantage on key leadership dimensions is seen in the way some of these swing groups evaluate the two candidates. For example, honesty and personal appeal are real advantages for the governor among older men, who strongly favor Gore on such issues as health care. I lost another swing group. But parents basically favor Gore on most of the issues as well. But when we get to personal evaluations, parents tend to favor Bush in terms of honesty and using good judgment. Only half of the populist Republicans, the group that have drifted from Bush, think the governor cares about people like them and as many as one in four of them favor Gore for health care and social security and Medicare.

Finally, I came away from this poll realizing how much I mis-read public reactions -- I mis-read the conventions. I thought the Republicans did a better job than the Democrats, but that is not the bottom line that comes out of this poll. What we see is the Democrats are, to a much greater extent, on the same page than the Republicans and that is unusual. Fewer Republicans, 49 percent, think that their party is doing a good job of standing up for its traditional positions than the 62 percent of Democrats who take that view. There seems to be much more Democratic unity and there are clear signs of potential lack of harmony on the part of Republicans, if not a fight, if Bush were to lose.

In terms of turnout, we have better news than two months ago. I am here to report that the measures are now at the 1996 level, and we can rejoice that nearly 49 percent of the American public might vote and not less than 49 percent. And I think I will leave it there and let the distinguished panel give us their perspective.

S. Hess: Thank you, sir. Thanks, Andy. I think we will start with Tom, then E.J., and then Chuck. Fair enough? And then maybe I will say some things too.

Thomas E. Mann: All right. Thank you, Steve. And thank you, Andy, for giving me a chance at an early read at your report. The Pew Research Center reports really are distinctive. We have a lot of polls now. Polling reports give us two, three, four results, new results a day. And Andy usefully summarized the range of opinion, but the great advantage of Pew is that we really have these over-time comparisons to give us perspective of where we should expect to be. They have very large ends. They have spent two weeks in the field and give us a sense of movement that might have occurred during this period and many nuggets inside, including using the typologies to give us a feel for the kind of groupings within each of the parties. So, hats off again to Pew. This is a very useful report.

I think I would initially underscore a major point made by Andy but press it even further. Namely, the analogy to 1988. I think for at least a year, 2000 has been shaping up as close to a replay of the 1988 election as we can imagine. And this stands in contrast to the other potential analogy, namely, the 1960 election when we also had a Vice President seeking to succeed to the presidency.

We collectively as a political community put much too much emphasis on trial heat polls taken early in the election year, even though we know that those polls don't give us any sense of the underlying shape of the race until after the two major party conventions. So, we take a lead that Bush might have in May or February or the previous fall and set out to explain it, assuming that it has some reality, some meaning, some basis. Alas, we have come up with all kinds of explanations for a phenomenon that now no longer exists. So, it is rendered much of our coverage I think a little silly.

I still remember the attention given to a CNN Gallup report that 47 -- I think it was in July -- 47 percent of the electorate will definitely not vote for Al Gore. This was big time news. I mean my reaction at the time was what can this possibly mean before the party conventions? Alas, that number in Andy's report has declined rather dramatically, also in the CNN Gallup numbers.

Now, after the conventions, voters have an opportunity to take measure of the two candidates. They haven't been paying attention. Now, they are paying a good deal of attention, at least in a relative sense, and that is what conventions, debates, campaigns are about. They are helping inattentive voters find their way home, find their way to their natural vote, whether it is their party or responding to broader forces that exist in the election.

Therefore, rather than saying sort of issues have fueled Gore's surge, I think I would be inclined to say that those issues were always there potentially, but it wasn't until Gore was in a position to be the nominee of the party and establish himself with the electorate, that he was in a position to take advantage of those issues precisely the same way that Vice President Bush was able to do so in 1988. If you look at the way the numbers have moved, it is eerie how similar the lead that Vice President Bush had after Labor Day is very close to what the average lead for Gore is right now. That doesn't mean the results will be the same. They are, obviously, on certainties, campaigns can make a difference. But I would say if you look at the fundamentals of this election, of the state of the economy, Americans' subjective feel for how things are going, the perception of how well the administration has done in the presidency in managing the country's well-being, the issue agenda, the positioning of the parties, and now even the perceptions of the candidates and their personal qualities, I think the evidence points to a reasonably comfortable Gore victory, absent some change in the course of the campaign.

What we are interestingly seeing also in Andy's -- in the Pew poll here is that a Democratic party advantage, you are seeing it in party ID, you are seeing it even among leaners, independent leaners, you are seeing it in perceptions of which party can handle problems. And now it is also showing up in the other polls in the generic vote for the House, which have been pretty well even for a long time. But in the last three polls, we have leads of five, four, and eight points for the Democrats in the vote for the House, suggesting, at least for now, there is a movement toward the Democrats that is consistent with the broader fundamental forces that are operating in this election.

Andy said there are limits to the analogy but the limits are pretty weak reads right now. Yes, there is a 5 percentage point difference in independents but Gore more than compensates with the larger number of Democrats in the electorate who are supporting him. And, similarly, the number of real swing voters as opposed to groups that are evenly balanced, the people who are genuinely sort of undecided and who might move show no clear advantage for the out party. And as Andy said, Bush continues to lead on some personal dimensions but those have been reduced rather dramatically and in some other surveys, the leadership factor itself is now even.

So, I don't think this race is best described as a dead heat with an uncertain outcome. I think Governor Bush has every incentive to reach as large a group of potential voters as he can. That means looking for the largest audience for the debates as possible and trying to do something to change a dynamic that, in my view, clearly works to his disadvantage.

Let me just take a couple of minutes to point out some other nuggets in this survey. People have raised the question of whether there is a contradiction in Gore's message, which is times have never been so good but we have got real problems. Some people have been left behind. There are sort of strains in the economy. Is a populist rhetoric compatible with a referendum on good times? I read Andy's report to say yes that, in fact, that message gets it about right, that people both think things have been going very well, the country is headed in the right direction but there are strains in our lives and that seems, at least as Andy's report shines light on it, to be a strategy that will both help mobilize the base of the Democratic party and appeal to swing voters.

I want to point out, underscore again what Andy has found on the interest turnout, that there really has been up-tick. That is what conventions are supposed to do. It hasn't caught up with '92 but it certainly is at '96. And to the extent we see any sort of differential impact of turnout, we are not getting big differences now between all registered voters and those most likely to vote. There are sort of minor differences. Earlier in this election year, we were getting 10 point differences in some of the CNN Gallup polls. We are not getting that at all now, which I thought was an additional interesting finding.

Two last points. One, just to quibble, I don't find much value in the notion of Clinton fatigue. In one sense, it is self-evident, everyone is weary with melodrama and soap opera of the last two years. But I was always dubious of its electoral relevance and impact. And now that Gore has established himself as the nominee, Andy is finding, yes, people are happy to see Clinton go but it is not having any real bearing on the choice in the election and, therefore, I don't think has any real significant relevance, at least as in evidence in this survey for the election. Maybe it will surface in some ways again, but I don't see the bite.

My final point is on taxes because there is some contradictory information in the poll. On the one hand, Democrats and Gore seem to be holding their own on the broader issue and on the sort of social security issue more generally. But Andy has two items in there, sort of support for the estate tax and partial privatization of social security. He gets very strong positive responses to both questions and yet neither of those are predictive of which candidate or party is handling these issues best. Democrats have a clear advantage on social security and Gore -- and they are fighting partial privatization. And Democrats are also resisting and have voted and sustained the veto on the estate tax. My point here is that I don't think those items are fair measures of the underlying opinion because there are no costs associated with it. Should individuals be given the option of investing a few percentage points of their payroll taxes in the markets? Hey, why not? Unless you say but you will have a lower guaranteed benefit and then there is money that we have to find to compensate the Trust Fund, similarly with estate taxes. So, that is the one part of the survey that I would take with some modest degree of skepticism.

Thank you.

S. Hess: E.J., have you anything that you would say to the modest degree of skepticism?

E.J. Dionne, Jr.: Well, first of all, I want to apologize for being late. My editor and I connected later than we wanted to this morning, and as many in this room know, the one thing no sane reporter does is leave his editor waiting two hours while he does a panel discussion.

S. Hess: I explained that you were -- in introducing you in your absence that you were one of these Americans who have to hold down two jobs.

E.J. Dionne: Yes, exactly. That is exactly right.

I think Andy would be a good journalist because I think he put the lead on page 2. I think that chart -- I meant that as a compliment, page 2 of a very, very long report. I think that chart on the political typology and the horse race tells us an enormous amount about what has happened and helps I think resolve some of the debate and the mystery over what the effect of Al Gore's much debated convention speech was. As all of you know, at the time, there was a fierce debate about whether Gore was being too "populist," wasn't being New Democrat enough. And I think where Andy finds the most movement here suggests to us two things. One, that in fact Gore's need for more conservative down-scaled Democrats was very strong and that there was an opening there. And so you see this enormous shift among socially conservative Democrats. But you also see this shift among populist Republicans.

I think Gore's gamble was that he could do a little bit of populism on certain issues. And let's be clear, it is very safe populism. If you remember, he attacked big polluters. I do not see a vast public constituency on behalf of big polluters, that he is endangering there. He could do this without endangering his support among groups, such as New Democrats. He also gained ground among New Democrats. And I think with a calculation, he made a couple of calculations there, one of them Tom referred to. It is very clear from this polling that Gore, if he wins, will depend heavily on voters at the middle and the bottom of the class structure. And if he praised the economy too lavishly, he would endanger those votes. And so he needed to send that message to them, that he heard them.

Then on the other hand, the more affluent pieces of the Democratic coalition could be held on simply by the fact of prosperity, which Gore also mentioned. I think there was one overlooked sentence in that speech where he said basically, I will say all these populist things, but I don't mind if anybody gets rich. And I think the New Democrats and some of those other constituencies heard that part of the speech too.

And, interestingly, on that chart on page 2, populist Republicans, a very interesting new invention, I love Andy's typologies. I always say that my favorite group he ever invented is now defunct, it was a group called the upbeats. And I hope that doesn't say something about our political culture. But anyway if you go back and look up the upbeats, they are very interesting group.

But this populist Republican group I think is very important, and the fact that Gore has been able to make inroads there suggests that this odd mixture of a little bit of populism and a little bit of affluence has taken him a long way.

I think these numbers also suggest an implicit strategy for Bush, which is he has got to drive some kind of wedge between those socially conservative Democrats and those New Democrats. Somebody there can be taken -- might be taken away. And as David Gergen said in another context, "There are three things Bush needs to do to drive that wedge, and I have absolutely no idea what they are." But I do think there may be a clue in the social security numbers that Andy produced.

I agree with Tom, and I think Andy would agree with this, that the problem with the social security privatization issue is that opinion on this is very much conditioned by the details. And you can move opinion on social security privatization about 30 points in either direction depending on how you describe the plan. Nonetheless, I do think that in the end, because Bush has made these big proposals, he will have no choice but defending them. And might you see some hints with the New Prosperity Independents and perhaps with some of these New Democrats that if Bush got out there and actually started making a case for these proposals, he might make some modest progress in these groups. And the election is still close enough that modest progress means something.

The other thing I think is very important and a part of the Gore speech that I think was overlooked at the time, or at least didn't get much attention because everyone was talking about populism, was how much in that speech was about family and about family values and about families under economic stress. And if you go back, there are a lot of paragraphs that keep coming back to this theme. When Gore spoke about education in that speech, he pointedly referred to character education, which is clearly a signal to socially moderate and conservative voters. And I think that one of the many interesting findings here is on page 32 where when you look at parental status, Al Gore gained 11 points among parents. He gained four points among non-parents. I think it is no accident that he went after Hollywood this week, and whatever the polemics about what he did in the past and what he did now, I think that is part of a continuing campaign aimed at this group, socially moderate to conservative group.

Similarly, Joe Lieberman talking a lot about religion, I think helps the Democratic party more than it hurts it. I want to use his parentheses to put in an advertisement. Andy -- on this survey but not reported today -- are some very interesting questions about religion that Andy and I have been working on together as part of another project which we will talk about. And I think you got an invitation to that session on your seats. But the one thing I want to say about religion here is that I think you have an unfair situation where it helps Democrats to talk about religion and hurts Republicans to talk about religion. That unfairness is rooted in the problems each party needs to solve, that the Democrats needed to solve and may still need to solve a problem where more conservative voters worry about their values. The problem Republicans need to solve is that more moderate and liberal voters worry about their ties to the Religious Right. There has been a lot of talk about how the press is unfair on this issue. I don't think it is actually the press, it is actually the political circumstance that puts Republicans in one box and Democrats in a different box.

On the family stuff, if I can make a bibliographic reference, I think you can understand an awful lot about these numbers and about what Gore is doing by looking at a piece that ran in the American Prospect a couple of issues ago by Anna Greenberg, a professor at Harvard, and her father, Stan Greenberg, about the Democrats need to win the values war and the fact that they have lost it. And an awful lot of the strategy outlined in that article, you can see in the Gore campaign and you can see in these numbers.

A couple of other things. The Republicans are very split on the tax cut. And you see that on page 17. And I think this describes the political problem that Governor Bush has with the tax cut. If you look at the difference among staunch conservatives, moderate Republicans and populist Republicans, use the surplus for a tax cut, that is the number one priority of the staunch conservatives. But it is far down the list among moderate Republicans and populist Republicans.

I think this finding by Andy recapitulates a very important study that Tony Fabrezio, a Republican pollster, did of the 1996 election. Tony found that Republicans aren't just divided between social and economic conservatives, economic conservatives themselves are divided into two groups, the tax-cutters and the deficit-cutters. In 1996, Clinton cut into the Republican vote among the deficit-cutters, even as he lost the tax-cutters. And I think inherent in these numbers is the same problem of balance that Bush has. Again, I think just as Bush has no alternative but to come forward and create a defense for his social security privatization, so I think he needs to make more public arguments about his tax cut, although these numbers suggest how difficult that is going to be for him.

I think this survey also suggests that we might -- you could have a headline on a section of this, "Let the Recriminations Begin." I think what you see here is the potential for a very large explosion within the party that loses the election. That potential for explosion is particularly large in the Republican party but that is easy to say now because they are running behind in the polls. On page 4, Andy's finding that fewer Republicans than Democrats think their party is doing a good job of standing up for its traditional positions, 49 percent versus 63 percent. You are already hearing some rumblings from conservative Republicans saying that Bush isn't being conservative enough, is not standing up for conservative values. I think that will be one strain of criticism if he loses. And then you will also hear from McCain Republicans, a new constituency, about other problems in that sphere.

I think if for some reason this campaign turns around and Gore starts going down, you will see this nice unity among New Democrats and populist Democrats busting up in a recapitulation of that argument in the party.

Just a couple of other quick points. I think Tom made an important point, the complexity of the Gore strategy, praise the prosperity but say it is not good enough. All through these numbers, you see the importance of that. Gore cannot win if he just appeals to affluent, satisfied voters. A lot of those affluent, satisfied voters are still voting for Bush on principle because they are conservative Republicans and because of a long tradition that more affluent people usually vote Republican. That has not been altered. Gore is simply getting -- and Clinton before him -- got enough of the affluent vote to win the election. And that is still the split that is here. Again, on the private accounts, I think there is a need for caution.

Lastly, I would -- just on page 25, point to, again, the importance of this -- wait do I have my page right? Oh, on the question of Clinton fatigue, I think Al Gore takes Clinton fatigue seriously, and I think that is one of the reasons why he has made some strategic adjustments in the selection of Lieberman. His surprising announcement at the convention that, "I don't want you to judge me on the record of this administration but on the future," in fact, that could be said -- that statement by Gore could be said to be something less than true. Of course, he wants to be judged by the record of the administration when it comes to affluence. But he did make this separation from Clinton.

And on page 25, the decrease in the margin that Bush had among those tired of the problems with the Clinton Administration is very important. But note that Gore gained even more ground among the pro-Clinton voters. I think what you are seeing in general is that Gore had a very complicated balancing act going into his convention and into this stage of the campaign. A lot of people thought that balancing act couldn't be pulled off. So far, he is pulling it off, and I think Bush's priority is to do anything he can to shake the wire on which Al Gore is walking and to try to challenge that balancing act.

Thank you.

S. Hess: Thank you, E.J. Well, we have heard from my two colleagues, who they like to say are inside the beltway. I thought we would go outside the beltway to Chuck Jones of Cross Plains, Wisconsin. Chuck, where is Cross Plains, Wisconsin?

C. Jones: It is five miles east of Black Earth.

S. Hess: But, actually, it is close to the beltway because it is near Madison, which Republicans think is part of the beltway.

S. Hess: Chuck, your comments?

C. Jones: We still have one-digit zip codes.

I have got some bad news, first of all, for Tom. The polling has begun for 2004. So, I think the message is don't pay any attention to the numbers. In fact, I am a forward-looking sort of guy. I am working on an essay already of why winning Vice Presidents serve only one term, Van Buren, Bush, and Gore cases.

I would like to note some broader themes that I think are supported by the data in this terrific report. The first is that it is different from 1988 in a very important feature, as reflected in the date here. That this is a good election in good times. It seems to me the data are very optimistic about the election, about what we say we ought to have in a democratic system. The data suggests good candidates, where the public, the respondents believe these are good candidates, that there are issues, that there are differences, and that there is clarity, a fair amount of clarity in what those differences are.

To quote the report, "Campaign themes are connecting with most voters. Seven of 10 say Gore and Bush are talking about the issues that are important." It seems to me that is an anecdote to the usual cynicism. Certainly, in 1988, it was judged to be an election in which there were no issues, the Pledge of Allegiance, for heaven's sake, developed as an issue, as did the whole Willie Horton business and the ad. So, it seems to me that is very different.

Certainly encouraging to me since I recall when -- in thinking ahead to the election last year and judging that it would be Bush versus Gore -- I had predicted that it would go to the House of Representatives because no one will have voted. The data in this report suggests quite different.

It is also good to remember that change will happen. The question is who keeps the good and proposes the better? And it seems to me that Gore is now ahead on that matter, though Bush still is very much in game, as is evident there, there are large numbers willing to consider him still.

The data also suggests that what the voters want is George Bush to lead with Al Gore's agenda, as to say his personal qualities, his leadership qualities are attractive to the public but not his position on a number of issues. Now, that may change, a bit more about that in a minute.

As regards Gore, there is lots of evidence to suggest why he needed to achieve separation. All Vice Presidents serving with a President need to achieve this if they are going to run for president. The Clinton fatigue, as evidenced on page 25, it seems to me as voters shift away from the President, they want to invite change, they don't want connection. I agree with what has been said about Clinton fatigue. But still Al Gore had to achieve this separation, and he did. And I judge the Lieberman selection as critical for that, as a frame for the separation, if you will, because the picture changed dramatically from Clinton/Gore at the convention, after the selection, to Gore/Lieberman. And that picture had an impact I think in the judgment of people, it had an effect in the judgment of people about Al Gore and his separation from Clinton.

Compare that to 1996 where I don't think that Bob Dole ever achieved that separation where they were attaching him to Gingrich, Dole/Gingrich to Dole what's-his-name, never quite worked as well. It also had the effect of freezing in place the why can't Gore get it together stories prior to the convention in favor of a first. The press, in my judgment, favored the selection of Lieberman for professional reasons. It just is an interesting story. And so there was an immediate shift from why can't he get it together to who is this guy, this first, and what is the effect of his selection? And what is the effect of his being a Jew? And I learned more about various forms of Judaism in that week or so following the convention than I certainly knew to that point.

And the effect then on the base, as is evident in this report, was that there was a legitimate separation favoring -- they favored essentially, the base favored Gore anyway on the issues, now it was legitimate to support him on character, which was I think very important with women.

So you get an emerging strength as well for Gore on leadership. And I see some evidence in the data that he has the potential for moving up on that leadership question and that is what I meant earlier when I said they want Bush's leadership with his agenda. It may -- in another couple of weeks, we may find on that question, they are perfectly willing to have Gore lead on his own agenda. I think there might simply some lag in regard to that question.

Now, as far as Bush is concerned, we are now in the why can't he get it together set of stories where slips smother the message. And every campaign has slips on a daily basis but it is a question of what gets covered. And right now, not only are the slips being covered but folks are looking for the slips to cover because there is a kind of a consistency there.

Bush needs an event like the Lieberman choice to freeze the coverage, the critical coverage in that same way and shift it to a more positive message. The debates, possibly such an event, but the first plan on his part was a total disaster. In fact, it fed the he doesn't seem to be able to get it together, they don't seem to know what they are doing part of the story.

Still, he is hanging around. Even among Republicans, the data show that the decreases on the Republican side among those on your page 2, those decreases are not necessarily moving over to Gore, I think only in one case. So, they are hanging out there and so there is a potential there for him to move that 87 support number up again. Also, a higher percentage of voters might still change their minds, as is indicated, in the report.

There is one very clear issue problem for Bush, and it has been alluded to in a number of ways, and I would describe it this way, the tax-cut trap. He has proposed it. It is a large across-the-board tax cut. It is very difficult at this point to be flexible on it or to make changes. The Gore strategy is to link everything then that he proposes otherwise to that tax cut and propose that he can't do the rest of it. So, I see that as very much as a tax-cut trap, which Republican candidates have fallen into before.

Now, the Gore tax cut approach is much more flexible because it is targeted and so you develop a new target to suit the circumstances or other interests that you may identify and develop. So, it seems to me that is a trap in which Bush is currently and it is difficult for him to get out of it.

S. Hess: Is that it? Whenever I find that I am distinctively out of kilter with a Andy Kohut survey, I ask myself where have I gone wrong? For the sake of this argument and some discussion and some instincts and some data, I am going to raise the question in one regard of where I think Andy may have gone wrong. You will recall that in July, the survey was suggesting that we were going to have a very low vote. And that was the theme of it. Andy now refers to evidence of voter interest and enthusiasm that would show some rise there. Of course, we are comparing it to doing better than 1996. If we use that as a hallmark of voter excellence, it would be like comparing a baseball excellence to the Mets of 1962. But, nevertheless, if you go back to 1988, we will draw that analogy as both Andy and Tom have done in a minute.

I must say on several scales that I can refer to, I do not see the rise in voter interest or enthusiasm that may translate into higher voting at this time. For one thing, for all of us who follow the Shorenstein Harvard Vanishing Voter Survey, which comes out each week and has worked at something they call the Voter Involvement Index, which was always running except at peak moments like Super Tuesday about a third of the nation who were involved in this. Okay, there was a sudden spike up at the Democratic Convention period to 42 percent. And then it started to plane down again, back to 34 percent for another two weeks, to this week at 25 percent.

Andy's people were out in the field from August 24th to the 10th. I suspect some of what he brought in is that earlier enthusiasm, which at least the Harvard study shows is declining very fast. At the same time, many of you know, I am involved in a TV monitoring project. Journalists have a very sensitive head indicator. When there is a hot spot out there, they go to it immediately. The data I am showing so far does not show anything like a movement up in terms of news coverage.

Now, so we go to Andy's data on page 45 and here I would suspect that he has asked too many questions. The question is how closely have you been following news of the presidential election, and he has divided it into very closely, fairly closely, not too closely, not at all. Now, it strikes me that if you are somebody being asked these questions and you have some sense that the people on the other end are interested in things like public affairs, there is a clear divide between fairly closely and not too closely. Fairly closely has a subliminal message -- I think I can pronounce it even if George W. is having problems with it -- the subliminal message is I am sort of a good citizen but I have other interests. Not too closely says you are a dummy. So, what Andy does is combine very closely and fairly closely and he says, hey, 73 percent, three out of four Americans are pretty involved in this thing. I would say, if I were looking at these figures over time, that I would look at the very closely alone. Very closely may mean they read a newspaper or watch the evening news. It doesn't mean necessarily that they are passionately involved in politics.

If we do that, then we see something different. Then we see 27 percent now. Okay, go back and look at this time in '96 and we have got something like 29 percent, the same thing. We go back to '92, and that was a really exciting election and that is up to 47. But then go back to '88, the election that we all think this may resemble, and we have just the two figures of October and August. We sort of average them and we get 41.

So, in that election there were 41 percent of people following very closely while today there are 27. I think that is a very substantial decline. Compared with what else I know, I think that still suggest, although obviously we have a lot of time, a fairly low vote. Now, clearly, everyone knows that a fairly low vote should help Republicans. If I were giving gratuitous advice to the Gore campaign, I would say, for example, drop half of your advertising budget and put it in Get Out the Vote. I think if, indeed, I sense something of a continuing low voter turnout, that it could be still a lot closer election than it looks otherwise.

By the way, I would also say, since I am very much playing the "contrarian" today, that if I were giving advice, again, that nobody has asked for, to the Bush campaign, I would say go positive and big advertising and stress your issues because I think -- strangely, I am probably in bed with Bob Novak -- an uncomfortable place for me at least for a while -- but I find there is a lot there. For example, again, Bush's drug proposal came out on September 5th. So, I think Andy's poll from August 24th to the 10th may have caught only -- hadn't completely caught the Bush drug prescription proposal, which I think has the capacity to neutralize what is perhaps certainly one of the most important. But if we consider the most important issues as stressed, education, drug prescription, the social security question, and the tax cut, it strikes me that Bush has still a lot of mileage in education, particularly if you look inside these and you find vouchers being quite popular. As I said, talked about the drug prescription, which I think has been neutralized. My colleagues have tended to minimize the privatization of social security but there are figures there. And, again, it is the way of presenting -- I agree with them, the only great problem there is the tax cut proposal and even there it is sort of a strange thing. Americans are overwhelmingly in favor of cutting the estate tax, the only tax that really truly helps only the rich by definition. So, what is going on? Have we suddenly turned into a nation of --

[TAPE CHANGE]

S. Hess: -- and returning taxes to us make no difference, so I think even there is a possibility of shaping things.

So, at any rate, I agree with everything else in the survey but if I am right about the size of enthusiasm for this election, and I think it very much relates to the whole question of public contentment or the politics of contentment. And I think it will, of course, get even worse in that regard, starting tomorrow NBC will be out of business as far as covering the news. They will be into the Olympics. In some ways, ABC was out of business last week, measuring news accounts on the presidential campaign of two and one-half minutes or more, a story that shows their interest. ABC World News Tonight last week had zero.

So, that is my quibble, sir. And now you can wipe us all out.

A. Kohut: I think you may have misunderstood something that I said.

S. Hess: Okay.

A. Kohut: I don't think that turnout is going to increase, Steve. I just have a little less pessimism that it is going to be lower than 1996. And I guess I wasn't clear enough about this, as to asking too many questions, these are the same two questions I have asked in all of these cycles. And the better measure is the first measure, which is thought given to the election. And there, you have a pretty consistent relationship of 59 and 2000. And by the way, the front-end of the interview -- this interview is divided into two pieces. There is not a whole hell lot of decay. That voter thing may go every week, but there is a lot of noise in those measurements because we don't have that much of a split within our survey. In fact, there is relatively little split in the horse race, which we break out. I would be happy to break out the voter interest measures.

But if you look at the longest running and the most important measure that we use and Gallup has used historically to predict turnout levels, the thought given to the election, we got 59 now. We had 61 -- or 56 in early September '96, 69 in 1992 and about 61 -- let's use 61 to 57, about 59 in '88. So, they are all the same. Those are stronger measures than the news interest measure, particularly since they come first and have a way of pushing the respondent one way or another. So, I think I will stand by my forecast.

What I said last time was that I was a little worried by my hand-wringing because it could be that the lower levels of interest in June had to do with the fact that this was a particularly front-loaded campaign and we had this big void. And I think that is what this survey is showing. Now, I don't think we are going to have anything near 55 percent or some big up-tick. But I think 50 percent is really what we are dealing with. And even if we are dealing with 51 percent, 52 percent, that is not a big deal. We still have about -- we are still going to get about half the public. And my guess is not materially more than half.

But I guess what this data is suggesting, and there is still more time to see how things go, it is not going to be materially less. It is not going to be down in the 47 level, which it might have been if those numbers had held as we had been measuring them in June and July.

The only other point I would make is to Charles Jones' point, I am struck in this election by the most important thing that I observe in doing surveys and watching Washington, and that is the nature of the disconnect. How differently the public judges things from the way the media and the political community does. And you are right I think about Lieberman. The bounce really began before the Gore speech. I looked at the internals and polls, which showed that Gore's support was going up even before he gave that speech. But by Thursday -- and I am sure you got these same calls because you get many of the same -- I got calls from reporters saying, "What if there isn't a bounce, what happens? How many calls did you get? Because the read was entirely different than the reaction. And that has been the story of public opinion in the Clinton years, that commentators and pundits and people who watch these things at a very, very precise level come away with a completely different -- not completely but often a different impression than the American public.

S. Hess: Everybody happy with opening to questions. Do you want to make a comment?

E.J. Dionne: On turnout, I have a theory that somebody could write a mathematical formula that would show that if a candidate is ahead by more than 8 or 10 points, your turnout drops proportionally. And I think one of the tests of where turnout is going to be is from a fact we don't know, which is how close do voters perceive the election to be. And I think in '96, part of the decline in turnout was explained by Clinton's big lead the whole year and then partly from some disillusionment when the scandal story broke and it was easier for weak Clinton supporters to stay home in protest to the scandal, knowing that he had a very big lead.

Just two other quick points. The labor movement has already followed Steve Hess' advice, and they have since '96 have shifted a lot of money out of advertising and into turnout. They are going to follow the same strategy this year, and I think there is going to be plenty of soft money and every other kind of money spent on that. Because I think how ever big or small the turnout is, I think you have seen differential turnout can have a real impact, and I think you saw that in the 1998 congressional elections.

When Chuck spoke, I realized there is a hope for Bush here, which is that there does tend to be a story line into which every other fact is organized. And if the story line is bad for you, as it was for Al Gore for those four months, the story line is generally negative. Bob Lichter showed how the terrible the coverage of Gore was in the four months after he essentially clinched the nomination. And even though I agree that the "commentariat" can be completely out of line with where the electorate is, a drumbeat of a certain kind of coverage clearly begins to affect the standing of a candidate. That happened to Gore early. It is happening to Bush now.

And I would just like to point out that every single one of us -- on the issue of subliminal campaigning -- every single one of us is being manipulated to like this survey because Andy has been strategically placed under the word "king."

And Steve was off-message because he couldn't see that.

S. Hess: Let me add one more thing because it shows some support for the statements of both. These are the figures that will come out next week in USA Today. This is the negative and positive of the networks last week on Gore and Bush. Gore is 46 percent positive, 55 percent negative. Pretty close. Bush, 79 percent negative, 21 percent. Now, we had this same thing, as pointed out, with Gore earlier in the year. Given any skills on the part of the Bush people, we could see another bounce back. In other words, what I have always contended is that the press reaches the golden mean by averaging and that they have given us the Bush lead, now the Bush negatives. And there is still very much time as they have to deal with the story day in and day out to spin around and do it the other way. And if, indeed, the media has any effect on the campaign, I think it is possible to expect this.

Chuck?

C. Jones: Just one point on turnout. We talk about turnout as a national phenomenon but turnout happens within 50 states and the District. And it also depends very much on the perception by the parties within the states, their organization, and their capacity, and other races that are occurring within the state. In Wisconsin this year we have all incumbents and the only state-wise race with Kohl, all incumbents are assured -- in Congress are essentially assured re-election. We are duty-bound in Wisconsin to turn out to vote, so it will require a fair amount of activity just within Wisconsin to get turnout up on both sides for the national part.

S. Hess: Now, we will go to questions. Please wait until the microphone is given to you, otherwise we would lose this when we transcribe it. Also, if you would please identify yourself. The lady right there?

Q: Jill Lawrence from USA Today. Andy touched on my question. It was really pretty extraordinary after the Gore speech at the convention how unanimous the punditry were in their opinion of the speech. In fact, a New York publication recently ran a whole transcript of the Beltway Boys where he was dismissed as toast. And my question is why is there this disconnect? What is causing it? Why do the people in the various groups you survey have such different reactions than the people who are commenting on these events?

A. Kohut: I don't know, Jill, that is a hell of a question. I just think that in some ways the commentators get so close to the forest, they can't see the trees or whatever that metaphor is. And I think that they bring a frame of reference and a lot of code and a lot of assumptions to events like conventions that average voters just don't have. And the perspective of someone watching Gore or the Democrats versus Bush and the Republicans is quite different than one of the Beltway Boys, I think.

T. Mann: There is absolutely no comparative advantage in discerning the reactions and sentiments of ordinary Americans held by people who comment on politics in Washington. There is just no comparative advantage there. It is an industry. It is a money-making industry, and I am talking now about the cable talk news shows. Frankly, the real journalism was quite different and much more nuance than subtle and lacking in certainty.

But I think this is another case of poll-driven coverage. There was a tracking during the Democratic Convention that showed no gains for the Democrats during the course of that convention leading into Thursday evening and so the story to be told was why are the Democrats blowing this opportunity. And we had this incredible hype, this has to be the greatest speech of Al Gore's life. It has to be superlative. Listen, George Bush as Vice President kind of messed up his VP selection and in spite of that went on to have a very successful convention as gauged by the shift in the standing of the candidates before and after the convention. Most of life, as someone said, is showing up. And those of us who talk so much about politics tend to hype these things when in reality let's acknowledge what Chuck said originally, the good news out of this is we have able candidates who are seen by the public as perfectly capable of serving in the office. There are real differences on the issues between the candidates. There is clarity to them and much of what we hear in Washington is noise.

Let me just add one thing about polling there -- I'm sorry, E.J.

E.J. Dionne: No, go ahead.

T. Mann: Polls really make a contribution when they can be used to put the public's view of things -- to give the public perspective. But too often what polls have done is they are conducted at absolutely the wrong time because they are conducted at times of high public emotion, in the middle of events and you get these weird swings and extraordinary reads which are misleading when public opinion is judged at some later, more dispassionate period of time. And polling is now increasingly used to underscore the story-line of the moment. And, yes, if you do these polls in these emotional times, you will get feedback but it dissipates. And using the 1988 comparison, again, I remember in New Orleans when Bush announced that he had Dan Quayle, this is the end of Bush, he cannot possibly win. This certainly does it. Again, when the polls came back two later, no, the American public doesn't have a high regard for Dan Quayle. But, no, it has little to do with the prospects of voting for George Bush.

S. Hess: E.J.?

E.J. Dionne: I just want a couple of points. I remember that night. You probably only heard us if you were driving around in a car but David Brooks of The Weekly Standard, whose politics are different than mine, and Elizabeth Arnold and Scott Simon, we were doing this thing on NPR and our analysis wasn't the same as that analysis. And I think there were some people out there -- we were somewhat critical on style, we debated the whole issue of talking over the applause but substantively the general tenor of the discussion -- somebody can get a transcript and prove me wrong -- but the general tenor of the discussion is that Gore had accomplished certain things with that speech.

I think there was, if you will, a peculiar interconnection among commentators between a certain ideology and a certain analysis. I am not talking about right-wing ideology. I am actually talking about a kind of New Democrat analysis that said Gore had to move to the center, populism is inherently dangerous. That is the past. That is the old Democratic party. That is a strong story-line in the press. And there have been moments when that story- line has been true. But I think the tendency to view things purely through that prism rather than to say populism is not William Jennings Bryan or even FDR, there is something different going on here and that this is more subtle got lost when people were very committed to a particular view of what the Democratic party needs to do to win an election. And I think for some people it is a principled point of view. I am not criticizing people for holding that as a principled point of view, but I think it did affect the analysis. I don't know if anybody agrees with that.

S. Hess: And, Jill, I would add another partial answer, not unlike these, to your question and that is we, the political experts or junkies, and the voters are there are really looking through different ends of the telescope. Example, before we started this morning, I said to Carl Leubsdorf, the bureau chief of the Dallas Morning News, "Did you watch Hillary and Rick last night debate?" "Yes, I did." "What did you think?" He then gave me a brilliant 90-second analysis, he did this, she did that, and so forth and so on. I said you have just written your Sunday column but what about the person in Rochester, what do they feel in general about Hillary and Rick? That is a different picture. Those are the different ends of the telescope. Not that he was doing anything wrong, he was just doing something different.

Now, next question. Yes, second row.

Q: Hi, Jonathan Weisman, the Baltimore Sun. This is pursuing the same kind of line but I am curious to ask Professor Jones, you were talking about how press coverage could possibly impact the election from here on. Before the Democratic Convention and during the Democratic Convention, the press coverage of Gore was pretty negative, even just the mainstream -- just print media. So how come -- if the press seems to be a lagging indicator following the polls and such, how can now suddenly the press have more impact and actually be a leading indicator of where the election might go?

C. Jones: I don't know that they are. So much of what the role of the press, it seems to me, is within the organization itself, the candidates organization and so here, along with the image then, the way in which it is portrayed, if the press begins to pay attention primarily to the slips earlier that Gore made and now that Bush makes, it affects the capacity of the organization itself to do what they are planning to do. And it is very difficult to get out from under that.

Now, the effect of all of that on the public is a whole other issue where legions of scholars over the years have had great difficulty identifying precisely what is the effect of the press on public opinion and specifically in regard to a specific event.

A. Kohut: Yes, I think the press tends to exaggerate developments that are out there and revealed in polls at particular times but that can be reversed by dramatic events or sort of normal political education coming from events, like the conventions which tell us that the press is an interesting story but probably not a great independent influence on the outcome of elections, and I don't see any way in which this -- the course of the election for the remaining 53 days will be dramatically influenced by what the press does. If the dynamic changes, it will be because of real events in the political world and strategic decisions by the candidates that have -- that get a reaction in the broader electorate.

E.J. Dionne: In defense of us, very briefly, I think we respond to events and then sometimes over-react to them. But it seems to me that what Gore desperately needed to do before his convention was shake the predominant story and he did that by picking Lieberman. There were a whole bunch of different reasons, Chuck touched on some of them, why that choice helped shake the perception, everything from if Clinton fatigue is real, which is a predominant view I think in the press, then Gore is responding to that. The courage ascribed to him for picking the first Jew to be on the national ticket, the fact that Lieberman was a centrist, the fact that it turned out he was interesting and an upbeat character on the campaign trail, that was a big fact. And I think that fact sort of shook the perceptions in the campaign, not only on the part of the press but on the part of a lot of other people.

And then the story-line began to change and then, to Bush's disadvantage, a few mistakes he made sort of fed the new story-line. And so the challenge to Bush is to figure out if he can do anything to force Gore into a mistake or something that would switch that story-line again.

T. Mann: But, E.J., be careful, George Bush, the Vice President in 1988 didn't pick a Joe Lieberman, he picked a Dan Quayle and in spite of that, he managed to pull off the same transformation as a result of his convention, which suggests, hey, there are some broader forces that are operating here and it is not just the particular decision.

C. Jones: One other point, a former student of mine, who is familiar to many of you, Mark Roselle, who has done a lot of work on the recent presidents and the press, their relationship to the press, found that quite understandably reporters have images of candidates that sometimes can be set in perfectly rational in the behavior, in the character, in the experience of that candidate, that they are perfectly willing to report as different along the way but when something happens, they return to that basic image that they have. George Bush began, you may recall, as a frat boy kind of candidate, not that strong upstairs and so forth. And you can re-write that if things are going well but when things don't go so well, you can fall back -- and there is nothing against reporters for doing this -- but fall back on that because it seems to be confirmed, the same with Al Gore and the stiffness and all that sort of thing. And any deviation from that is going to be reported, obviously enough. But you can fall back then if something goes wrong on that image that you began with. They have long shelf-lives sometimes.

Q: I am David Lightman from the Hartford Courant. You sat here for over an hour and nobody has talked about the role of money in the campaign. And I know in our reporting when we go out, people have no idea what soft money is but they know there is too much money and they are cut off, and they read these stories about these enormous fundraisers, every city seems to have one, and I wonder if that feeds this alienation we keep talking about. There are several questions, as you can imagine, from this. Will it affect turnout? Will it affect impressions of Al Gore? How does this play, if at all?

T. Mann: First of all, money has not played a decisive role in terms of the relative raising and spending of dollars. It did not determine who the party nominees were and it will not determine who wins the outcome of the presidential election or which party controls the House and Senate after November. It is partly because of some general parody between the parties and the resources, soft money, and aligned groups that they have operating. It is partly because McCain raised enough money to make his case and Bush's victory, I believe, cannot be attributed to superior resources in any way.

So, it seems to me there is a lot of hyperbole out there about how money is distorting election outcomes. It is not to be found there. It is to be found in the absence of competition in a number of congressional races, but that is another story.

As far as money as an issue that the public cares about, it is still sadly the reality that campaign finance reform is below the surface as an issue that shapes the outcome of elections, that shapes individual votes. John McCain was able temporarily to make something of it by tying it to broader questions of political reform. But right now, I don't think either candidate is doing anything with the issue. Both candidates, both parties are raising all the soft money they can. They figure we have got an arms race, this is no time for unilateral disarmament. And every bit of evidence suggests they will not be hurt by pursuing this strategy.

So, in spite of your concerns and your reporting, I think it will neither affect the outcome of the election nor will it be a factor in the minds of individual voters.

I think turnout is potentially influenced to the extent money is invested in Get Out the Vote efforts. The Republican party has budgeted tentatively $100 million for a ground operation to try to neutralize the effort of the labor unions. I think spending that money makes a lot of sense. So this is a case where allocating resources on the ground in certain key districts and states could very well make a difference of 2, 3, 4, 5 percentage point turnout. And if there is an advantage for one party or the other, in that turnout effort make a difference in the outcome.

C. Jones: We didn't discuss it in part because it isn't in this report. And my question to Andy is are there data that you want to report?

A. Kohut: Well, I have only data in my own mind. Gore came out of the primaries in better shape than Bush did. And I kick around in my mind, well, what was the worst thing that Gore did, calling himself an imperfect messenger of campaign reform or proposing sanctuary for Elian Gonzales. I don't think either of these candidates have any credibility on this issue, and I didn't think it was worth a question.

Q: Most elected officials don't care what people like me think.

A. Kohut: Right, that is part of the typology. Well, those are the kinds of things that shape people's cynicism, the amount of spending, the amount of money influences people's cynicism but I don't think either candidate is going to have a particular advantage in terms of political reform on this or a disadvantage in terms of being seen as having spent a whole hell of a lot of money.

E.J. Dionne: Let me just say quickly. I agree with the premise of your question that campaign reform can be a significant issue and McCain made it one. The problem in this campaign is that neither Bush nor Gore has an easy time of making it a central issue because they are both spending and raising so much money. Gore is trying -- he very pointedly said campaign reform is going to be the first order of business, and he said that a bunch of time. But it is harder for him to make that case given the money situation he is in.

I agree with Tom that the Bush/McCain fight was not decided by money. On the other hand, I can't help but -- I was talking to Congressman Mark Sanford this week, and we were going back over the South Carolina primary, and he noted that Bush had so much money that he even bought Charlotte to affect two counties in South Carolina. And Sanford said that that was like bringing in a naval ship to take out the kid's fort in your neighbor's backyard. So the money difference did play some role there.

Q: Hi, Will Lester with AP. The headline on my very nice invitation from Brookings was talking about "swing voters, who are they, and what will make them decide." And we have touched on that. Andy had several mentions of who they are, but I would be real interested in anybody who is willing to give kind of their summary, kind of bringing it all together on which groups to really watch and what to really watch for as they fight for this group that is maybe not firmly in one camp or the other because that seems like what we are coming down to is the battle for whether it is -- you know, you see the fight over 10 percent and then one story which was I guess pure undecideds, they will fight over 25 or 30 percent. I would like to hear anybody who is willing to give a take precisely on who these people are and where they think the campaign will be going the hardest to get them.

A. Kohut: Well, I thought what I said in the presentation and in the report is that we see these same groups. We see younger women, older men, white mainline Protestants, and white Catholics. And I think that in almost all of these groups, there is a push/pull between liking Gore on the issues, particularly the big issues like health care and entitlements and having a more favorable view of Bush in personal terms with regard to leadership and with regard to political honesty. And perhaps even a broader judgment about being more personally comfortable with Bush than with Gore. And I have some data that I can share with you that is not in the report, Will.

T. Mann: I would just add a couple of brief points. One, the interesting debate has been whether sort of the key focus for the Democrats should be on the working class or the middle class. It is the sort of lower-income versus the new economy Democrats. And I think what you have seen is that Gore has decided to lean in his rhetoric toward the lower-income working class but have in place a program and a platform written largely by New Democrats with the architecture of the new economy and trying to do both of them. So, rather than say it is one or the other, he is trying to figure out to get both.

Second, I think both parties are fighting for seniors who traditionally have very high turnout rates. They have become less Democratic over time. The New Deal cohort is dying out, being replaced by the Eisenhower cohort. These voters are up for grabs.

Thirdly, the real targeting here is geographic in the presidential race. As we would expect, it is coming down to broadly a dozen states and a half dozen in particular. And the campaigns will go anywhere, not just to particular demographic groups to try to produce pluralities in those targeted states.

S. Hess: He is saying, Will, that this year's soccer mom is an old male parent is very religious and has some negative attitudes toward gays and elected officials but also is sympathetic to the poor, right?

S. Hess: Andy actually makes a case here, not just for soccer mom but soccer dad. I agree with all the groups he listed. When Gore went ahead, a lot of the stories said and a lot of the politicians said, "It is because he has built this huge lead among women." Well, that is true in its way. But if you look on page 31, one of the most striking things is Gore gained one point more statistically in significance among men than he did among women, which is to say a whole bunch of people moved at the same time. And I think it is always one of the flaws in our discussion of the gender gap that when a Democrat is winning, we say, "The women's vote is really important because they have such a huge lead among women." When the Republican is winning, we say, "Boy, the Democrats have this terrible problem with white men." And, in fact, there is a kind of constancy under the surface in terms of the gender gap.

And, yes, there is some evidence in some places that Gore is doing particularly well among women. But I think what you saw, I just think that there is a danger in the way we talk about the gender gap to explain more than it actually explains and to explain movement that it doesn't necessarily explain.

A. Kohut: You have to factor generation or age into the gender gap because these older men -- when we saw the Republican party making some unusual gains among older people because of the generational things that Tom was talking about, that wasn't true for men and women. Older women are still strongly Democratic and older men are the ones who are drifting, who are looking to the Republican party in increasing numbers. And you can see this pretty consistently in all of the polls that we conducted when we use 50 as a cut-off point and the under-50 men have a strong Republican tilt. The under-50 women, who Gore did very well with, Clinton did very well with, are pretty much up on the fence and older men are as well.

C. Jones: Same with racial and ethnic characteristics on women?

A. Kohut: No, I don't think so. There is a little bit less of a gender relationship among -- there is a bit of a gender relationship among non-whites but it is not very strong.

C. Jones: I thought I saw data where white women were split evenly.

A. Kohut: Let's see, what do we have. White women, we have 46-42. It is reasonably close.

C. Jones: Yes, fairly close.

Q: Dan Freedman, Hearst Newspapers. I have kind of a follow-up question and that is just to look at the independents. Your poll has Gore and Bush neck and neck among independents and that is at variance with some of the other polls. Zogby was out yesterday with a poll. And I believe the New York Times also had a poll showing Gore widening his lead among independents. How key is -- you have talked about swing voters, just as a sub-set of that, how key are independent voters, the outcome here? And I am looking at your chart on page 29 which shows some of the issues and personal qualities that independents are looking for. What is it going to take for that vote to break one way or the other for Bush or Gore?

A. Kohut: Well, I am going to go back and say the same thing I said earlier and that is it is going to come down to whether people are being driven by their preferences on issues, which favor Gore, particularly health care and entitlements, or their discomfort with Gore and their greater attraction to Bush on the leadership dimension, pushes them toward Bush.

I can't remember an election where there was such a push/pull. And it is mostly among independents. You have got 89 percent of the Democrats in one place and 87 percent of the Republicans in another place. I don't suspect that they are going to move all that much, although there might be that there is a potential for some -- believe it or not -- some Republican defection. But, overall, it is going to be decided more among independents than elsewhere.

I remember looking at the Gallup data from 1960 where Kennedy won only among Democrats and Nixon carried both independents and Republicans. I don't think that that could possibly be the model here. The model here is whoever wins independents will win the election.

T. Mann: Let me just add a footnote to that. As this survey makes clear, independents are far from a monolithic group and there are relatively few pure independents, that is a good number of independents are hidden partisans. That is they lean toward one party or the other and they vote as loyally as most partisans do. And I think you will find during the course of the campaign, they will be coming home to their party. The real question is that sliver of the electorate, and it really is a sliver, that sort of pure independents, to the extent they haven't made up their mind already, they tend to be less informed, less interested, less attached, and I would say if past experience is any guide, if you had to forecast how they would vote, you would look again for the broadest forces operating in the election. They are the ones most likely to act in referendum-like fashion. Times good, vote for the party in power. Times bad, kick them out.

Q: Not too different from non-voters.

T. Mann: Very much like non-voters, right.

S. Hess: This is going to have to be the last question. Others can come up.

Q: Chuck Holmes with Cox Newspapers. Stephen touched on the question of the Olympics and what kind of changes it could have to the dynamic of the race, and I would be interested in the other panelists' opinions on that.

T. Mann: I think the argument here is because there will be such public interest in the Olympics, because it will further reduce the amount of network news coverage given to the campaign, that it will have the effect of freezing the race as it is now. And, therefore, if the most recent round of polls, including importantly the Pew Study Report is true and there is a read of plus or minus 5, 6 points for Gore, you would guess that that would remain until after the Olympics are over and there is an opportunity through nationally-televised debates or some other heavily covered campaign event to alter that dynamic.

E.J. Dionne: If the U.S. wins a whole lot of medals, it is a very slight help to the incumbent party. And in terms of the effect of it, I don't think television -- and Steve is the expert on this -- television is so fragmented, I wonder what the audience is going to be -- not to make NBC stockholders feel bad -- but who knows what that audience is going to be like with the delay. And so I wonder if it will have as much of a freezing effect as we all say or not, and I don't know the answer to that question.

S. Hess: Well, if you are not interested in the Olympics, I think you will find a lot of political news on ABC and CBS. If you watch the counter-programming, Jennings is doing his two big profiles tonight and tomorrow night when the audiences will be so low anyway that he might just as well have a serious political discussion.

C. Jones: If we lose a lot, like gas prices, it is Bush's fault.

S. Hess: On that note, it is always a joy to have Andy Kohut come and give us the opportunity to comment on his remarkable polling and surveys. We thank him. Of course, we thank the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, which produces these quite substantial and very important surveys.

Thank you all for coming. There will be a transcript by tomorrow night on our website.

[END OF EVENT]