Gore Moves into Overall 3% Lead - Based on Commanding 15% Lead Among Female Voters; Bush Still Leads Among Men

Business Wire, Sept 15, 2000

Business Editors

ROCHESTER, N.Y.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 15, 2000

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

The Harris Interactive Election 2000 survey was conducted from September 7th to September 12th among 4,941 registered voters selected at random from the Harris Interactive Internet panel of more than 6.6 million respondents.

Some pundits may describe Gore's three percent lead as a statistical dead heat. Political commentators have said the two candidates are running neck and neck. In fact, it is clear that from this and other recent polls that Gore has a modest, but real lead. At this point in the campaign, the discussion should not be about whether or not Gore has a lead, but rather how big of a lead he has.

Gore's lead is strongest among women. He is capturing 52% of the women's vote in comparison to Bush who is only garnering 37%. Gore also shows his strengths among younger voters where he is capturing 52% of the vote among voters under 30 (Bush 38%). Is all of the news bad for Bush? Bush's campaign can delight in the fact that he is very strong among men. Bush has a nine-point lead among men where he is capturing 49% of the male vote (Gore 40%).

Throughout the campaign season, some of the questions from Harris Interactive Election 2000 surveys will be regularly available through Excite@Home's new elections site (http://elections.excite.com/poll). Visitors to the site can cast their votes on these questions and compare their opinion with those of Harris Interactive's online panel of more than 6.6 million respondents and with other Excite.com members.

                                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?"

                                     %
-----------------------------------------------------------------
George W. Bush                       43
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Al Gore                              46
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Pat Buchanan                         2
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Ralph Nader                          6
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None of these                        1
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Not sure                             2
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      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  Ralph Nader  None of these Not
         Bush                                          of these   sure
------------------------- ------------ ------------- -----------------
           %         %          %            %             %        %
------------------------- ------------ ------------- -----------------
Male      49         40         2            5             1        2
------------------------- ------------ ------------- -----------------
Female    37         52         2            7             1        2
----------------------------------------------------------------------

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

Methodology

This Harris Interactive Election 2000 study was conducted between September 7th and September 12th with a national sample of 5,195 respondents from the Harris Interactive Inc. panel of Internet users. Data were weighted by age, sex, education, income, race/ethnicity, region, and hours spent 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 three 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.