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CHICAGO (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Though recent polls conducted among potential voters over the two major presidential candidates show George W. Bush ahead of Al Gore, the latter is not giving up.
In coming weeks, Gore campaign members state he will shift the battleground and attack Bush on issues such as social security and matters related Bush's competence, experience and judgment in his ability to act as president. The results of a CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll Saturday indicate that support for Bush has risen 4 percentage points, while support for Gore has dropped the same amount, for a 51% to 40% Bush lead. Minor candidates Ralph Nader of the Green Party and Patrick Buchanan of the Reform Party, respectively received 4% and 1%. Saturday's tracking poll results were the first based entirely on interviews conducted after the third and final debate. Another poll conducted by the Washington Post/ABC News - a rolling three-day average of nightly interviews with 1,020 likely voters - shows Bush's support at 48% and Gore's at 4%5, a lead within the margin of error. Green Party candidate Ralph Nader has garnered 3%, while Reform Party candidate Patrick J. Buchanan garnered 1% of respondent support. In Post/ABC polls held over the past two weeks, Bush has held steady at 48% in every measure taken, while Gore has fluctuated between 43% and 45%. The results of the three debates apparently favored Bush over Gore. Observers state that Bush, starting with very low expectations from the American public, has been able to clear up some myths concerning his ability to handle sticky issues, of which foreign affairs is one. Gore's team had hoped that his performance in the St. Louis debate, in which they thought the Vice President's demeanor was balanced, would win them back the shift in undecided votes that seemed to sway towards Bush following the first two debates, but polls did not reflect that aspiration. The Gore campaign, in the coming weeks, will focus on social security, attacking his opponent's plans. Hoping to take advantage of voter doubts on the matter, Gore's team's strategy is to work on Bush's proposal to allow younger workers to establish private savings accounts for some of their payroll taxes. "We think Social Security is enormously powerful," said Gore senior strategist Tad Devine. "That's why we've made a commitment to it." The Bush camp, for their part, is aiming to mobilize the Republican Party's army of state governors meeting in Austin on Sunday afternoon, and then fan out across the country for campaign rallies the rest of the week. In what some political analysts have called a surprising turn in the final stages of the presidential race, the Bush campaign plans to begin running ads in Tennessee - Gore's home state - and Minnesota. Meanwhile, with very low expectations to win the American presidential elections, Nader hopes to at least to turn the Green Party into an established party and break the hegemony of the two major political parties, by providing another alternative to millions of Americans stressing the ideas of environment, quality of life, trade and social issues as the center of public concern. |
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