The bizarre, heart-stopping aftermath of the 2000 presidential election, historic as it is, would never have occurred if the election had been held just one week earlier. National pollsters are nearly unanimous in believing that a George W. Bush lead of perhaps 5 percentage points at the end of October turned into the dead heat in the popular vote that was cast on November 7.
By Election Day, most national polls were reporting a swing toward Al Gore. At least two widely followed national polls (CBS and Rasmussen) announced big shifts to Gore in press statements issued on Election Day itself. But the first pollster to detect a significant swing to Gore was John Zogby, who conducted national and state tracking polls for Reuters. Zogby’s national tracking found a Bush lead of around 4 points early in the week before the election turning into a Gore lead of 2 points, based on polling conducted through Monday night, November 6.
Zogby, who maintained his thesis of a Gore trend in the face of skepticism from Republican officials and (at first) his fellow pollsters, dismisses the theory that the trend was triggered by the revelation on Thursday, November 2, of Gov. Bush’s 1976 arrest for drunk driving. Though Zogby doesn’t rule out the possibility that the revelation contributed to Bush’s late problems, his interviewers began picking up the Gore trend several days before the DUI story surfaced.
If not the DUI “November surprise,” what did begin the Gore surge? Some analysts believe that, given the favorable economic and social trends in the country, Bush’s lead was always destined to shrink or disappear. But that raises the question of why the pattern of the past few months was not a gradual shrinking of a big Bush lead as the election neared — the pattern of the Nixon-Humphrey race of 1968 — but a seesaw, featuring large (and largely unpredicted) swings to Bush in the spring, to Gore in the summer, and back to Bush in the fall.
It is, in retrospect, widely and correctly believed that Gore helped himself at the time of the national conventions and that Bush benefited from the presidential debates. It is also widely believed that the public’s conflicted view of the Clinton presidency was a key subtext of the entire election cycle (see “The Politics of Bifurcation,” by Jeffrey Bell in THE WEEKLY STANDARD of March 13, 2000). Certainly Bush’s biggest applause line throughout the campaign was about restoring integrity to the White House, and Gore’s best period in national polling came after he distanced himself from Clinton in his convention acceptance speech and chose the most prominent Democratic critic of Clinton as his running mate.
But did Gore’s late surge, coming at a time when Clinton was doing his first high-profile campaigning since the convention, mean that voters were beginning to discard their divided view of Clinton? If the election had lasted another week, would Gore have won going away, fully vindicating the Clinton legacy?
Political scientists may debate this question for decades. But a cursory look at the huge exit poll conducted for the news media by Voter News Service (VNS) suggests some interesting and rather surprising answers.
First, on Election Day, approval or disapproval of Bill Clinton remained an uncanny predictor of a vote for Gore or Bush. Gore got just 6 percent of anti-Clinton voters, while Bush managed 12 percent of pro-Clinton voters. It was Bush’s ability to retain a decent share (37 percent to Gore’s 59) of the 18 percent of voters who approve of Clinton’s job performance but disapprove of him personally — the “Clinton bifurcation” voters — that allowed him to split the national vote in the eighth year of an administration that has presided over some very favorable economic and social trends.
Second, it is clear that the issue of Social Security, little discussed through most of the campaign, proved to be a big plus for Gore. Nationally, 14 percent named it as the issue that “mattered most,” a number exceeded only by “the economy/jobs” (18 percent) and “education” (15 percent). Those who named Social Security as their top issue voted for Gore 59 percent to 39 percent. The pattern is similar in almost every state. In Florida, for example, 13 percent named Social Security as their top issue, and they broke for Gore 58 percent to 40 percent. In Pennsylvania, the issue appeared to help Gore even more, with the 15 percent who named Social Security as their top issue breaking to Gore 65 percent to 33 percent.
Gore criticized Bush’s plan for partial privatization of Social Security all along, but began to make it a central focus only in the third and final presidential debate on October 17. Immediately after the debate, at a time when Bush had clearly regained the lead and appeared to have a chance to take control of the race, the Gore campaign began a heavy television buy attacking Bush’s partial privatization plan. In its own advertising, the Bush campaign decided not to defend his plan directly, but to question Gore’s veracity on this and other subjects. The VNS poll suggests this response ultimately failed to satisfy most of the 14 million voters who put Social Security at the top of their list. Given the lateness of Social Security’s prominence in the campaign, it seems plausible that it generated a portion of the Gore comeback.
But Gore’s advertising on Social Security was most intense in such target states as Florida, Pennsylvania, and Michigan (where independent pollster Ed Sarpolus stated in late October that the ads had enabled Gore to take the lead). Because in big states where Gore was solidly ahead (California, New York) or behind (Ohio, Texas) most voters never saw the anti-privatization ads, the Social Security issue probably didn’t much move the national polls, at least at first. This may have changed when Bush implied in a Missouri appearance with less than a week to go that Social Security is not a federal program. National news media and the Gore campaign jumped on this quickly retracted sound bite, and made it Exhibit A not just on the issue of Social Security, but on Bush’s overall readiness to lead.
With 8 to 10 days to go, Bush appeared to be losing ground in the intensely contested battleground states, especially Michigan and Pennsylvania, yet his national lead seemed intact. This is why a victory by Bush in the popular vote combined with a Gore victory in the Electoral College suddenly became a major topic of speculation. A Bush popular win still seemed quite likely, while Gore’s gains in the big swing states made an Electoral College win for him plausible.
In other words, around October 30-31 all national polls showed a small but significant Bush lead, while most polls in battleground states were close or showed an outright Gore lead. If you had told most Electoral College analysts that a Bush national lead of 5 percentage points would turn into a Gore national lead, however small, by Election Day, they (we) would have concluded that Gore was headed for a rather solid victory in the Electoral College. This is why Zogby’s early spotting of Gore’s national surge was attacked so fiercely by Republican activists and pollsters. If Zogby was right and the popular vote was moving to a nationwide dead heat, Bush’s already shaky chances in the Electoral College would be nil.
Instead, a scenario no one had anticipated came to pass on Election Night: a slim Gore victory in the popular vote, together with a razor-thin (and still disputed) Bush victory in the Electoral College.
A comparison of nearly complete state-by-state returns with state polls taken late in the campaign gives a clear picture of what happened. Gore surged, but his gains were far from uniform.
Some states, including California and New York, saw a shift to Gore greater than the national average. (This may account for the loss of four Republican-held House seats in California and the unexpectedly large victory margin of senator-elect Hillary Rodham Clinton in New York.) A second group of states, including Ohio, saw a shift that mirrored the national average. And a third group of states, including socially conservative states in the South and heartland, shared little if any of the pro-Gore trend and in some cases actually flowed toward Bush.
A few examples give the flavor. To minimize anomalies and flawed samples, we have tried to confine ourselves to states in which more than one late poll was published.
P In California, polls by Zogby and Field with interviews concluding Sunday, November 5, when averaged, show Gore leading Bush 46.5 percent to 42.5 percent. On Election Day, Gore won 54 percent to 42 percent, a 12-point margin and an 8-point Gore gain.
P In Ohio, a Zogby poll ending November 5 and a Columbus Dispatch poll ending November 3 show Bush leading Gore 52 percent to 42.5 percent. On Election Day, this 9.5-point margin shrank to 4 points, 50 percent to 46 percent. The 5.5-point swing to Gore was similar to the national shift, but not enough to put in play a state where the Gore campaign had pulled the plug on its television commercials several weeks earlier.
P In Arkansas, the home state of President Clinton, which became a major target for both campaigns, three published polls with final interviews on October 29, October 30, and November 1 were taken by, respectively, Mason-Dixon, Opinion Research, and the Memphis Commercial Appeal. All three were in close agreement. When averaged, they found Bush leading 46 percent to 45 percent. On Election Day, Arkansas broke to Bush 51 percent to 45 percent.
P Many if not most of the states that voted for Bush showed similar resistance to the late Gore trend. A rare exception is New Hampshire, the only Northeastern state and the most socially liberal state Bush managed to carry. The final American Research Group poll, taken November 2 and 3, showed Bush leading Gore 48 percent to 38 percent. On Election Day, Bush won 48 percent to 47 percent, a 9-point swing to Gore that was considerably larger than his national gain.
Last and perhaps most pertinent is the case of Florida, the most diverse and least southern of the southern states, whose virtually even vote will decide this virtually even presidential election.
Time’s postelection edition, drawing on in-depth interviews with strategists for both presidential campaigns, makes clear that Florida, long assumed to be a solid Bush state, became a special project of the Gore campaign as early as June. President Clinton had won Florida 48 percent to 42 percent in 1996, and he urged a big Gore effort there. Ironically, one of the things that gave Gore a shot at winning Florida was one of his most visible disagreements with a Clinton policy: his widely excoriated decision to distance himself from the forcible return of Elian Gonzales to Cuba.
According to Time, then-campaign chairman Tony Coelho last summer found Cuban-American leaders more open to Gore than he expected. In addition, Gore field marshals Robert Shrum and Tad Devine were handling the successful U.S. Senate race of Democrat Bill Nelson, and polling done for that campaign found a huge generic Democratic advantage on preserving Social Security and Medicare. Later, a TV commercial accusing Bush of promising the same Social Security money “to young workers and seniors” boosted Gore’s positive rating by 10 points among Florida seniors, according to unnamed Gore aides speaking to Time.
What the aides do not say is that according to VNS, Bush won Florida voters 60 years old and above by 51 percent to 47 percent. Does this mean that the Social Security issue didn’t hurt Bush in Florida? Hardly. As mentioned earlier, Gore’s lead among voters listing Social Security as their top issue was roughly the same as his big advantage on this issue nationally. Furthermore, it’s often forgotten that voter concern about the future of Social Security is by no means restricted to those currently receiving it or about to receive it.
But the unwillingness of so many Florida seniors to break to Gore, despite qualms they undoubtedly had about Social Security privatization, is of a piece with the cultural and social conservatism that kept half of America in the Bush camp. It is also consistent with the 1998 congressional elections, which saw slight overall GOP declines among most age groups, unexpectedly offset by a GOP surge among seniors.
In Florida, as in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and the other states that bore the brunt of Gore’s mid-October TV ad offensive against Bush’s Social Security position, the Bush campaign had suffered much if not most of the damage on this issue by the time of Zogby’s final poll. That poll, taken November 3 to 5, showed Gore leading Bush in Florida 49 percent to 46 percent. The final result — 49 percent to 49 percent, a 3-point swing to Bush — puts Florida among the states that bucked the late Gore trend in the nation as a whole. (According to VNS, Florida voters who decided in the last three days chose Bush 47 percent to 41 percent.) If Florida had not been among these states, the White House transition from Clinton to Gore would be well under way.
It should be added that the resistance of culturally conservative parts of the nation to the Gore candidacy is apparent from the closeness of the vote in many economically liberal states that ultimately chose Gore. These include such Democratic-leaning states as Iowa and Wisconsin, which haven’t voted Republican since 1984 but came within an eyelash of voting for Bush, and Minnesota, which hasn’t voted Republican since 1972.
The fact that Bush lost his lead in the popular vote should not obscure the surprising strength of his candidacy in a time of peace abroad and low unemployment plus record declines in welfare and violent crime at home. As Los Angeles Times reporter Ron Brownstein put it, this has turned out to be an election in which gun ownership was a better predictor of voter choice than stock ownership.
From the launching of his candidacy in mid-1999 to Election Day, Bush understood that a campaign built around an ambitious domestic agenda would go against the grain, at a time when the nation was enjoying a justified sense of economic momentum. But he also saw that the resistance of the American people to the impeachment of Bill Clinton, far from signaling a lack of moral concern, created an opening for a broader discussion of the role of religion and values in culture and even government, a discussion few others believed possible.
The Bush campaign’s pursuit of this vision set the terms of debate and put Al Gore on the defensive, forcing him to depart from Clinton’s successful centrist strategy and rely on the kind of economic polarization that worked for FDR and Harry Truman but was getting stale as long ago as the 1960s. In our opinion, Bill Clinton’s flaws left Gore little choice, and his campaign proved tactically proficient in executing its strategy. But Bush’s fundamental insight was sound — that in 2000, the issue of values, of the acceptance or rejection of Clinton and Clintonism, would prove to be the vital center of American politics.
