Bush meets supporters in Tampa, Fla., on Friday. For the Republican candidate to capture the White House, Florida is seen as a must-win.

Ozier Muhammad/ The New York Times
Gov. George W. Bush, with his nephew George P. Bush, left, and his brother, Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida, spent a second day stumping in Florida, where he is struggling with strong gains by Vice President Al Gore.

What Role Will Ralph Nader Play in the Presidential Election?
Green Party candidate Ralph Nader is running well below the 15 percent in the polls needed to be eligible to participate in the Presidential debates. Yet he draws large crowds on the campaign trail. How will Nader's candidacy shape the election results?

Source: New York Times

The new face of political punditry: Jon Stewart of "The Daily Show."

The Political Influence of Comedians?
Some observers argue that remarks about the presidential candidates by David Letterman, Jay Leno, and other late-night television show hosts are just as influential as the remarks of serious news commentators. Marshall Sella explores this issue in The New York Times Magazine, in an article entitled "The Stiff Guy vs. The Dumb Guy."
Source: New York Times

Gore's Claims on Human vs. Animal Drug Prices Challenged
For most of the past week, Vice President Gore has had to fend off questions about his claim that his mother-in-law pays more for her arthritis drugs than he pays for the same drug for his dog. What is the real story about human vs. animal drug costs? This Boston Globe story could also be called, "Background on a Campaign Flap."
Source: The Boston Globe

Health Care for the Uninsured: Is There Hope for Common Ground?
Atlantic Monthly writer Matthew Miller arranged for Rep. Jim McDermott (D.-Wash.) and Rep. Jim McCrery (R.-La.) to have an extended conversation about health care, focusing on the 44 million Americans who have no health insurance. Miller notes that there may be opportunities for Democrats and Republicans to come to common ground on this issue, beneath the noise of the presidential campaign. This article also contains many links to other on-line resources on the health care issue.
Source: The Atlantic Monthly

Other Stories:
The Gender Gap: A British View Source: The Independent (London)
Weekly Standard Writers Offer Their Campaign Analysis: The WeeklyStandard

Op-Ed
Election Analysis and Commentary
Thursday, September 21, 2000
Eric L. Davis

With less than seven weeks remaining until election day, the 2000 presidential election is shaping up as the closest race for the White House since the Kennedy-Nixon contest in 1960. Partisan control of the House, and possibly the Senate, hangs in the balance as well, making this year's general elections the most competitive since the immediate post-war years of 1946 and 1948. What are the major strategic calculations and considerations that will occupy the candidates over the next few weeks?

What are the aspects of the campaign to which analysts, observers, and voters will be paying the most attention between now and election day? In this essay, I will offer some observations on these questions. I would encourage members of the class to comment on these observations, either through the electronic discussion conferences, or in questions submitted during Wednesday evening's Webcast lecture.

Although the momentum of the presidential campaign is with Al Gore as I write on September 21, the Vice President has by no means wrapped up a victory. Although George W. Bush has not had a good week on the campaign trail since the end of the Democratic convention more than a month ago, time has by no means run out for the Texas Governor.

Two forces have allowed Gore to build a lead over the past month. First, he has closed the gap between himself and Bush on the important character attributes of likability and leadership. From the start of the year through the Republican convention, Bush was rated stronger than Gore on both of these dimensions. Bush hoped that he could continue to emphasize character, rather than issues, in the weeks following the conventions. However, post-convention polls show that voters have, over the past month, relied more on issues than on character in making judgments about the candidates.

Secondly, the issues on which Gore has been campaigning - education, health care, and Social Security - are issues that are more salient to more Americans than the issues on which Bush had been campaigning in late August and early September - tax cuts and military readiness.

Bush has "relaunched" his campaign several times in recent weeks in order to adjust to an environment in which issues are more important than the Governor's strategists had assumed when his character-based campaign was planned. The challenge for Bush in the weeks ahead is two-fold: he must either move the issue-based campaign away from education, health care, and social security onto terrain that is more favorable to him than to Gore; or he must attempt to reduce GoreÕs lead on the issues of education and health care that voters say are most important in this year's campaign.

Will the related set of issues of oil prices, inflation, and possibly foreign policy (e.g., Saddam Hussein's threats to reduce or shut down Iraqi oil exports) become more salient in the weeks ahead? If so, which candidate will they benefit, and which candidate will they harm? If President Clinton releases oil from the strategic petroleum reserve, will this action have a noticeable effect on oil prices and supply, or will it simply provoke some OPEC nations to cut back production accordingly? If the price of gasoline and home heating oil "spikes" before the election, will Gore be held accountable, because of "eight years of failed energy policy," or will Bush and Cheney, both of whom are seen by voters as associated with "big oil," be facing even greater problems? If the stock market heads south in October (October is the month in which large market declines have most frequently occurred since the late 1980s), will the "good times" that Gore has been counting on to prop up his campaign be seen as threatened, or will Bush's plan for partial privatization of social security be seen as too "risky"?

Many of these themes will provide the background for the presidential debates planned for October. These debates, especially the first one scheduled for October 3, will be very important. For some voters, for whom the Olympics have been the most important news event of the past two weeks, the debates will be their first exposure to the presidential candidates since the conventions. How will the candidates use the debates to reinforce or change existing voter perceptions about themselves and their opponent? What about the undecided voters? Polls show that about 20% of voters are still uncertain about their vote choice. How will the debates affect these voters? Will the undecideds break toward one candidate immediately after the first debate, or will they "hang loose" until the final debate is over?

How will Bush and Gore adapt to the very different formats that will be used in the three debates? The first debate on October 3, with the traditional format of candidates standing behind podiums and answering questions posed by the moderator (PBS' Jim Lehrer) will provide the fewest opportunities for unexpected surprises. The second debate on October 11, where both candidates will sit at a table with Lehrer, provides the opportunity for some interaction between them, while the final debate on October 17, a "town hall" style event with questions from the audience, is the least scripted of all, and thus one for which both candidates will have to expect the unexpected.

Most analysts have noted that this year's election will be decided in a relatively small number of states, since both candidates have electoral vote bases of substantially the same size. Gore's electoral vote base is in the northeast and the Pacific coast states, while Bush's electoral vote base is in the south, the prairie states, and the mountain states. Neither set of base states provides a candidate with the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency.

Six states are the key battlegrounds in this year's election. As of mid-September, most polls show that Bush is ahead in Ohio, Missouri, and Wisconsin, with 43 electoral votes among them. Gore appears to be leading in Illinois and Michigan, with 40 electoral votes. According to this analysis, whoever wins Pennsylvania, with 23 electoral votes, wins the presidency. Recent polls show Gore with a slight lead in the Keystone State, but the Bush camp is devoting substantial amounts of advertising dollars and the candidate's time to Pennsylvania, and it cannot be placed firmly in either candidate's column yet.

Those participants in the course who live in Pennsylvania are invited to submit their comments about the election in their home state to the electronic discussion, or during Wednesday evening's lecture. I would be particularly interested in hearing from voters in the Philadelphia suburbs, because they live in a part of the state that analysts have identified as being the most closely contested counties in a closely contested state.

Finally, how will the competitive nature of this year's election affect voter turnout on November 7? Will the decline in presidential election turnout that we have seen over the past 40 years - from over 60 percent in 1960 to under 50 percent in 1996 - continue in 2000? Or will the close election and extensive mobilization efforts by both candidates lead to a larger share of the eligible electorate casting ballots this year than in recent elections?