Gore on top in Nevada poll; Senate race tightens

Wednesday, Sept. 27, 2000 | 5:59 a.m.

If the presidential election were held today, Vice President Al Gore would carry Nevada narrowly, a new poll shows.

A telephone poll of 500 likely voters from Nevada, taken Sunday and Monday by New Jersey-based SurveyUSA, found that 48 percent of the respondents would favor Democrat Gore if they were voting now.

Forty-three percent said they would cast votes for Republican George W. Bush. Nine percent were either undecided or said they would vote for fringe candidates.

The poll, commissioned by KVBC Channel 3, seems to confirm a recent swing toward Gore in Nevada with the Democratic trend also being evidenced in the race to succeed retiring Sen. Richard Bryan.

There is a 4.5 percent margin for error, said SurveyUSA, which said in a news release that it is "America's largest regional pollster."

An earlier poll showed Gore and Bush in a statistical dead heat in the state.

A Sept. 9-12 poll, released by the Las Vegas Review-Journal and lasvegas.com, showed the Texas governor as the choice of 46 percent while 42 percent opted for Gore.

The Mason-Dixon Polling and Research survey had a 4 percentage point margin of error, meaning the race was considered too close to call at that time.

Previous polls for the newspaper had Bush leading Gore by 8 percentage points in March. The lead had increased to 12 points by June.

This week's SurveyUSA poll also found Republican John Ensign, a veterinarian and former congressman, ahead of Democrat attorney Ed Bernstein, 49 percent to 42 percent, with 9 percent undecided in the race for U.S. Senate.

That 7-point margin would be the closest the two have been since the campaign began.

Ensign's 20-point lead in June dropped to 11 points, according to a poll conducted Sept. 9-12 for the Las Vegas Review-Journal and lasvegas.com. Ensign had 50 percent support to Bernstein's 39 percent in the Mason-Dixon poll. Eleven percent were undecided.