Election Season Heats Up

Although it is easy to come up with more interesting presidential candidates than Vice President Al Gore and Texas Governor George W. Bush, it would be hard to come up with two who are more evenly balanced. The primary campaigns helped to even the playing field, bringing the two candidates to approximately the same level.

Earlier in the campaign, Bush was Paul Bunyon, towering over Gore in expectations and polling. But Bush's bruising primary battle with Senator John McCain showed that Bush is not nearly as formidable a candidate as he once appeared. Gore started this race with serious problems with his campaign structure and his personal style. But his strong showing against former Senator Bill Bradley helped to improve his. The implications of a tight presidential contest on down-ballot contests are clear; there will be minimal, if any, coattails from the presidential race. The House, Senate, and gubernatorial races will largely be fought on their own terms. Most specifically, if Republicans are to hold on to their majority in the U.S. House, they will have to do it on their own. The presidential nominee is not likely to help much.

In the two-way matchups in the eight major national polls released since Bush and Gore locked up their respective nominations, three show Gore ahead, five put Bush up. Both the ABC/Washington Post and NBC/Wall Street Journal polls show Gore ahead by three percentage points while a Time/CNN poll conducted by Yankelovich Partners puts the Tennessean up by two points. Bush's largest lead is six in a CNN/USA Today/Gallup; the Battleground Poll conducted by Celinda Lake and Ed Goeas and the Fox/Opinion Dynamics survey showed the Bush lead at four points. The Texas governor led the vice president by three points in polls done by Newsweek and Zogby International. Average all of these results together, and Bush has a statistically insignificant one-and-a-half point lead.

That does not factor in Pat Buchanan, the presumptive Reform Party nominee, who looks headed for the 3 percent to 8 percent range. The most recent polling on this race was done by CNN/USA Today/Gallup, which showed Buchanan with 6 percent. Buchanan took two points from Bush, none from Gore, and four from undecided. In the ABC/Post poll, where Buchanan polled 4 percent, he took two points from Gore, one point from the undecided, and none from Bush. Buchanan pulled just three points in the Fox/Opinion Dynamics poll, with two from Gore, one from Bush. Newsweek had Buchanan drawing four points from Bush and three points from Gore while Time/CNN/Yankelovich saw Buchanan's five points divided, three from Bush, two from Gore. With such an erratic pattern emerging, it's safer to make no assumptions about Buchanan until polls are taken closer to the election.

While any appreciable coattails are unlikely, the presidential race is not completely irrelevant to the political equations in other contests. Of clear concern is the West Coast, where it is critical that the Bush campaign not write off California with its nine competitive House races; Washington state with four key races; or Oregon with a single competitive race. House Republicans are fortunate to have former National Republican Congressional Committee executive director Maria Cino serving as political director of the Bush campaign. She is obviously mindful of their needs and concerns. Conversely, Democrats in a number of southern districts must pray that Gore remains at least competitive in their state; they can win in a narrow-loss scenario, but not in a blow out.

A hot topic these days is what role California will play in the November presidential election. With the Golden State's denizens seeing their home turf as the center of the U.S. political universe, it is common to hear operatives from both parties in the state insisting that it is a "must win" for the Democrats. Implicit is...