Six in 10 Say Gore Should Concede

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Six in 10 Say Gore Should Concede

© 2000

Updated 10:16 AM ET November 27, 2000 By WILL LESTER, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - Six in 10 Americans, including a fourth of Al Gore supporters in a new poll, say it is time for the vice president to concede now that George W. Bush has been certified as the winner of Florida's 25 electoral votes.

Nonetheless, about six in 10 in the ABC News-Washington Post poll also said they would accept Gore as legitimately elected if he were to emerge as the president. More, almost eight in 10, say they would accept Bush as legitimately elected.

About 40 percent in the poll taken Sunday night said Gore should concede because the vote was fair, while almost 20 percent want him to quit because they "want to get this over with."

Gore's lawyers were going to court Monday in Tallahassee, the Florida capital, to object formally to the certification, a step known as a "contest" under state law. The vice president has been working to keep Democrats behind his appeal.

Almost six in 10 people say it's more important "for this to end quickly" than for each side to make its full arguments in court. That reflects partisan differences as much as impatience with the long fight: just over eight in 10 Bush supporters say it's more important for the race to end quickly and three in 10 Gore supporters.

Almost six in 10 overall say they would oppose the Florida legislature getting involved in the presidential race.

Those polled were about evenly divided on whether "dimpled chad," ballots that were indented but not perforated, should be counted - a question at the heart of manual recounts in southeast Florida.

The national poll of 607 adults has an error margin of 4 percentage points. Such overnight polls provide a snapshot of the emotional reaction to an event like Sunday night's news that the Florida vote was certified. Such findings often hold up in polls taken over a longer time span, as well.

The increased sentiment that it is time for the presidential election to wrap up does not reflect a shift in feeling about who should be president. That was still split in this poll as it was on Election Day, with 43 percent saying they favor Bush and 42 percent favoring Gore.

-- Uncle Bob (unclb0b@aol.com), November 27, 2000

Answers

I demand a recount of this poll.

-- (hmm@hmm.hmm), November 27, 2000.

Gotta love it when the author of an article knows exactly what percentage answered the poll, but instead says "almost six in ten". Does that mean 59.2%? Or 58.5%? Or maybe 57.8%? Who knows?

Then he goes on to say that the margin of error is 4 percent. But, if he never says what the actual percentage is, how can we apply the error margin to reach any legitimate conclusion?

Reminds me of all those polls that were flying around in the final week before the election and how many of them were saying Bush was up by 3 or 4 percentage points (with a 3 or 4 percent margin of error). The latest tally of votes shows Gore up by 0.2% (about 300,000 votes).

-- Brian McLaughlin (brianm@ims.com), November 27, 2000.


Bob, you should take another look at those numbers. It ain't something to be proud of.

-- (pretty@pathetic.actually), November 27, 2000.

Bear in mind that polls show that Sore did win the popular vote, so he feels he has some sort of mandate for all these legal suits.

-- (eye@the.sky), November 27, 2000.

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