Bush Moving Ahead As Race Enters Closing Stretch
By Alan Elsner, Political Correspondent
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Repub=
lican George W. Bush appears to
be consolidating his small lead over Democrat Al Gore as the
U.S. presidential race enters its frenetic closing stretch.
Since their=
third and final debate last Tuesday, the Texas
governor has solidified a small but crucial lead over the vice
president with 16 days to go before the Nov. 7 election.
Bush led Gore =
in all available national polls by from 3
percent to 11 percent. In the Reuters/MSNBC daily tracking poll
released on Sunday, he led by 45 percent to 41 percent, his
largest lead since the survey began on Sept. 29.
Green Party candidate =
Ralph Nader polled 5 percent; Reform
Party hopeful Pat Buchanan scored 1 percent, while 7 percent of
voters remained undecided.
``Gore has a problem. In addition to not get=
ting his message
through, the difference in this race right now is Ralph Nader,''
said pollster John Zogby.
``If Gore moves to the left with a populist m=
essage, he
risks losing ground in the vital center. If he moves to the
center he will watch Nader's support increase,'' he said.
The 2000 elec=
tion is one of the most crucial in many years
since control of the Senate and the House of Representatives
are also up for grabs.
Democrats have an outside chance of winning cont=
rol of the
Senate, where Republicans currently hold a 54-46 majority. In
the 435-member House, a net pickup of only seven seats could
swing control to the Democrats for the first time since 1994.
Newspaper=
s on Sunday began publishing their endorsements
ahead of Election Day. Gore received endorsements from the
Washington Post, the St. Louis Post Dispatch, the Minneapolis
Star-Tribune, and the San Francisco Chronicle.
Bush was endorsed by the=
Portland Oregonian, the Seattle
Times, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the Columbus (Ohio)
Dispatch, the Detroit News, and the Dallas Morning News.
Gore, searchin=
g for a way to turn the presidential race
around, planned a foray into Bush's home state of Texas on
Sunday to attack his plans to partially privatize Social
Security and pull U.S. peacekeepers from the Balkans.
<=
b>``Barnstorm For Reform''
Bush was to launch a ``Barnstorm =
for Reform'' campaign from
Austin that will involve 28 fellow Republican governors fanning
out through swing states over the next three days.
``We are very excite=
d about this, this is unprecedented,''
said Bush senior advisor Ari Fleischer. ``We have every
Republican governor save one coming into Austin to meet with
Governor Bush then barnstorm across the United States.''
The missing go=
vernor is West Virginia's Cecil Underwood,
who is fighting a tough campaign at home to keep his job.
The governors=
will split into groups and spread out across
the country from Monday to Wednesday, stopping in more than 45
cities in 25 states that represent about 319 electoral votes.
With the =
national race so close, attention was swinging to
the state-by-state contest to win the 270 Electoral College
votes necessary to be elected president.
One estimate by veteran politi=
cal analyst Hal Bruno for the
Politics.com Internet site gave Bush =
213 electoral votes, Gore
186 and had 139 votes up for grabs and too close to call.
However, indi=
vidual state polls in the Midwest appeared to
confirm that Gore's position was weakening in the toughest
battleground of the nation.
For example, a poll in Illinois released on=
Sunday showed
Gore leading by only 45 percent to 43 percent -- well within
the poll's margin of error.
Last month, Gore had opened a double-digit =
lead in
Illinois, prompting Bush to pull his TV advertising from the
state to concentrate on more promising battlegrounds.
Interviewed on th=
e ``Fox News Sunday'' program, Wisconsin's
Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson said he believed Bush could
carry both his state and Minnesota, both of which went
Democratic in the past three presidential elections.
``We're cautiously=
optimistic that we're going to carry
Wisconsin, and if we carry Wisconsin, Minnesota is also in
play,'' Thompson said.
But Louisiana Sen. John Breaux, a Democrat, said=
the race
remained volatile with many voters still weighing their final
decisions.
``A very unsettled election. I think people are still
looking at it as a popularity contest. The next two weeks are
going to be absolutely clear. It has to be a campaign and
election based on competence and qualifications and not
popularity,'' he said.