Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
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Introduction and Summary With less than a week to go before the presidential election, George W. Bush’s advantage with the voters on personal qualities is now trumping Al Gore’s edge on the issues. A steadily growing plurality has come to see the GOP candidate as more likable, more honest, more able to get things done, […]
GOP Narrows Issues Gap Republicans have made considerable headway over the past two years in cutting into the Democrats’ issues advantage. The public now rates the two parties about even for their ideas on taxes, education and the global economy. The Democrats narrowly led the GOP on global economic issues in January 1999 (38%-33%) and […]
Introduction and Summary Even with an uncertain conclusion, Campaign 2000 gets better grades from the public than most recent presidential contests. Fully 83% of voters say they learned enough from the campaign to make an informed choice — a larger percentage than expressed that view in surveys conducted in the days following the three previous […]
If you are expecting to soon find out what the election will turn on now that the debates are over, you’re going to be disappointed. In fact, you may be puzzled about the whys of the outcome even after we know the winner of campaign 2000. This is a very different kind of election. Not […]
Introduction and Summary With two weeks to go until Election Day, voters still can’t choose between Al Gore and George W. Bush. The perceived strengths and weaknesses of both candidates continue to drive voter indecision. People have a better opinion of the Texas governor personally than they had in September, prior to the debates. At […]
Gender Divide Among Issue Voters Issues continue to drive voter preferences, as strong pluralities of both Gore and Bush voters say what they like most about their candidates are their stands on issues. Experience is also a draw for Gore voters, while roughly three-in-ten Bush supporters say they like the governor because of his personality […]
Ironically as the debates kicked in, coverage of policy themes declined drastically, from 48% in Week One leading up to the first debate to 30% in Week Three. As the election got closer, the press favored the “race” over the issues. In all, about three-in-ten of the stories we studied related to policy themes. While […]
Background Since the mid-1990s when the World Wide Web became a powerful part of America’s communications and information culture, there has been great concern that the nation’s racial minorities would be further disadvantaged because Internet access was not spreading as quickly in the African-American community as it was in the white community. Former Assistant Secretary […]
Campaign 2000 Our study this year happened to coincide with the presidential campaign, and nearly two-thirds of our stations — 32 in all — were in states holding primaries during one of the two weeks in which we taped. This gave us an unusual opportunity to study how local TV covers presidential politics, especially when […]
Voters Trump Candidates In addition to evaluating the campaign process, voters were asked to rate the various players in the campaign. When stacked up against the candidates, the parties and the media establishment, the voters themselves come out on top. More than one-in-five give voters an A, up dramatically from 12% in 1996. In 1996, […]