A raft of May polls showing Gore slipping behind Bush was cited as evidence that the vice president's campaign had lost its footing and that the Texas governor had recovered from a rough primary. However, a crop of new polls finding the race a statistical dead heat has prompted some analysts to opine that Gore may have halted the hemorrhaging and Bush may have peaked. Seeking to spin poll results their way, Bush campaign aides briefed reporters in Austin this week to stress that the Texas governor has led in the vast majority of surveys since the Super Tuesday primary in March. The Gore campaign, which like the Bush campaign has professional pollsters on the payroll, has not brandished poll results in media briefings. Polls go up.
Polls go down.
And experts warn about reading too much into polls at this early stage, when much of the public is spending more time pondering summer vacations than presidential options. They say that voters will tune into the presidential race during the national political conventions in late July and August and begin to firm up their voting intentions around Labor Day. Political scientists argue that other factors, particularly public satisfaction with the economy, have historically been more indicative of whether voters will reward the candidate whose party currently controls the White House. Wlezien, along with Columbia University Professor Robert S. Erikson, has developed a forecasting model that uses economic data and presidential approval rates to determine who will win the White House. Based on the booming economy and President Clinton's high approval rating at the beginning of this year, Wlezien's model has predicted that Gore will win with 56.1 percent of the vote.