No Such Thing As A Sure Thing
Conventional wisdom says the South will support Texas Gov. George W. Bush, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, while the West Coast belongs to his Democratic counterpart Vice President Al Gore.
But such wisdom can be elusive, especially in the Pacific Northwest. Recent polls in both Washington and Oregon show the two men currently running neck-and-neck.
"I think it’s a lot more open than people think," says Stuart Elway, a Seattle independent pollster.
There's a perception that Washington and Oregon are Democratic states, says Elway, because Democrats have carried those states in the past three presidential elections. But the pollster points out that Bill Clinton garnered just 43 percent and 50 percent of the vote in Washington State in '92 and '96, respectively. And in 1994, Washington voters sent seven Republicans to Congress, out of a total of nine.
"It’s a swing state," says Elway.
Like Elway, Portland pollster Tim Hibbitts calls this year's presidential campaign a tossup. An early April poll conducted by his nonpartisan firm for the Oregonian newspaper showed Bush leading Gore 40 percent to 37 percent in the Beaver State.
"Right now, these two states are very much in play for the Republicans, and they have not been since 1988," says Hibbitts.
Neither pollster seems anxious to venture a guess as to why the two men are running so close. Voters in both states tend to favor moderate, progressive candidates and may see little difference between the two major party alternatives.
Elway points to a lack of a single, burning issue to galvanize voters, while Hibbitts suggests that the independent-minded voters who make up a quarter of the voting population in his state may suffer from "Clinton fatigue."
"There is a natural tendency after a certain period of time to want change," says Hibbitts.
"Al Gore’s in great shape with both general election voters and Democratic voters because he's in the right place on the issues," Gore spokesman Chris Lehane told the Associated Press.
But the vice president's message has yet to take root in the friendliest environments. Recent polling in other states carried by Democrats since 1988 - including Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin - also show him tied with or trailing Bush.
"What’s going on here is remarkable because this is his base," said Steve Schier, a political scientist at Carleton College in Northfield, Minn. "It’s a shaky base right now."
Schier says Gore's most high-profile moment in recent months - siding with Cuban Americans and against his own administration on the Elian Gonzales case – didn't help his campaign.
"He has created a lot of publicity for himself with a position that reinforces negative feelings about him - that he shifts with the wind, panders, is not trustworthy" he says.
The recent polls on the West Coast will surely bolster Bush's confdence. The Texas governor has vowed not to cede the Pacific states, particularly California, to Gore. Political observers have hinted that the race in California is much closer than previous polls have indicated.
As for the rest of the West Coast triumvirate, expect Oregon and Washington to produce carbon-copy election returns. The two neighboring states have voted for the same presidential candidate since 1972. Hibbitts says, "If I’m running a national campaign, I would think of them as a one-state, 18 electoral-vote unit," a voting bloc equivalent to the state of Michigan.