Gallup Poll: Bush Continues to Lead Gore; No One Dominant Issue in Campaign
LINDA STOUFFER, CNN ANCHOR: But how do you think the candidates are doing in addressing the real issues in this race?</s>LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: Well, let's check and see what the numbers say about all that. Frank Newport is editor-in-chief of the Gallup Poll and he's with us this morning. Good morning, Frank.</s>FRANK NEWPORT, GALLUP POLL EDITOR IN CHIEF: Good morning, Leon and Linda. The two clips that you just showed are very exemplary of what we're going to show you here, that is the candidates, Gore and Bush, out of there addressing all these little individual issues. We'll show you in a minute that they are right on with where the American public thinks they should be in this election. First of all, an update from this weekend on where the race stands. If the vote were held today among likely voters, who would win, well it would be George Bush, as has been the case all this year. Our latest numbers from this weekend, 50 percent of likely voters for Bush, 41 percent for Al Gore, likely voters in our estimation about half of the overall voting age population, those most likely to vote more likely to be the Bush voters than Gore voters, as is usually the case. Now back to the issues again, this weekend we asked Americans a very interesting question: What do you think should be the number-one priority for the next president, whoever he should be, when he takes office next January? What we got, a whole variety of issues that kind of go across the board that we've been hearing about from the candidates. Now these are Gore voters, they say education is number one; health care, Social Security and the economy, that's the top priority for those people voting for Gore. Bush voters, on the other hand, look fairly similar overall, education for Bush voters the number-one priority for the new president; then Social Security; abortion, there are some Republican single-issue voters there; health care, and then taxes is last on the list for them. Our overall conclusion, looking at these questions, is that there is no one dominant issue out there in the public -- for the public this year in the race. There is all kinds of little issues they want the president to address, and that is why you are seeing these candidates putting out all of these issue papers on all of these issues, and I'm sure we will see more of it between now and November. That's where the election is right now. Leon, Linda, back to you.</s>HARRIS: All right, thanks, Frank, see you in a bit.