Bush Makes Up Ground and Now Leads by 3%; Gore's Lead Among Women Decreases

Business Wire, Oct 13, 2000

Business and Government Editors

ROCHESTER, N.Y.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 13, 2000

As of early October, George W. Bush leads Al Gore by three percentage points. In the most recent Harris Interactive Election 2000 survey, 46% of registered voters say they will vote for George W. Bush this fall, while 43% will vote for Al Gore when asked to consider a four-person race (see Table 1). Buchanan and Nader receive 2% and 6% of the vote respectively.

The survey was conducted from October 4th to October 10th among 5,318 registered voters selected at random from the Harris Interactive Internet panel of more than 7 million respondents.

In the previous Harris Interactive Election 2000 survey, conducted from September 7th to September 12th, George W. Bush trailed by 3%. Bush has benefited from a 6% shift in the race over the last month. A portion of Bush's new lead can be attributed to women voters. Gore's lead among women has decreased over the past month. In September, Bush trailed Gore by 15% among women, and now he only trails by 6% (see Table 2). The women's vote is shaping up to be the deciding factor in this year's election.

This national poll is just part of the largest private polling program ever undertaken: Harris Interactive Election 2000. Coming in a week: Harris Interactive state-by-state poll results as of mid-October. Watch for our final poll results in November where we expect to call Presidential, Senatorial and Gubernatorial races in a poll involving more than 100,000 respondents. You can view the results of our polls at Excite@Home's elections site (http://chooseorloose.excite.com/). Visitors to the site can cast their votes on these questions and compare their opinions with those who were surveyed from Harris Interactive's online panel of more than 7 million respondents and with other Excite.com members. They can also register with the Harris Poll Online in time to participate in our election surveys this fall.

                                TABLE 1
           Four Person Race: Bush, Gore, Buchanan, and Nader
                        Base: Registered voters

    "If the presidential election were held today between George W.
Bush for the Republicans, Al Gore for the Democrats, Pat Buchanan for
the Reform Party and Ralph Nader for the Green Party who would you
most likely vote for?"

                                    October                 September
                                       %                          %

George W. Bush                        46                         43
Al Gore                               43                         46
Pat Buchanan                           2                          2
Ralph Nader                            6                          6
None of these                          1                          1
Not sure                               2                          2

      Note: Some percentages may not sum to 100 due to rounding.


                                TABLE 2
                        Four Person race by Sex
                        Base: Registered Voters

    "If the presidential election were held today between George W.
Bush for the Republicans, Al Gore for the Democrats, Pat Buchanan for
the Reform Party and Ralph Nader for the Green Party who would you
most likely vote for?"

                    George W.       Al Gore      Pat Buchanan
                      Bush
                   Oct    Sept    Oct     Sept    Oct    Sept
                    %       %      %       %       %      %

Male                51     49      39      40      3      2
Female              41     37      47      52      1      2


                   Ralph Nader    None of these    Not sure

                   Oct     Sept    Oct    Sept    Oct    Sept
                    %       %       %      %       %       %

Male                6       5      (a)     1       2       2
Female              7       7       1      1       3       2


      Note: Some percentages may not sum to 100 due to rounding.
                            (a) Less than 1%.

Methodology

This Harris Interactive Election 2000 study was conducted between October 4th to October 10th with a national sample of 5,318 respondents from the Harris Interactive panel of online respondents. Data were weighted by age, sex, education, income, race/ethnicity, region, and the propensity to be online, in order to generalize the results to the national online population.

In theory with a randomly chosen sample of this size and after weighting the data, one could say with 95 percent certainty that the results have a statistical precision of plus or minus 3 percentage points of what they would be if the entire adult online population of the United States had been polled. The sample used by Harris Interactive is not a random sample. While individuals have been randomly sampled from our database for this survey, they have previously chosen to take part in the Harris Interactive database.

There are several other possible sources of error in all polls or surveys that are probably more serious than theoretical calculations of sampling error. These potential sources of error include question wording and question order, non-response, and screening (e.g. for likely voters). It is difficult or impossible to quantify the errors that may result from these factors so the words "margin of error" should be avoided when reporting all survey data.