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Look at Current Polls

Aired October 07, 2003 -   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: California voters streaming to the polls today in a recall election that has managed to excite, enrage and outrage everyone from politicians to talk show hosts.
Last-minute accusations of shenanigans by Schwarzenegger have either hurt him or helped him in his challenge to Governor Gray Davis. It depends on which poll you look at. So who better to shake out the facts than our own Frank Newport. Well he's not our own, but he's editor-in-chief of the Gallup Poll. We do visit with his frequently.

Frank, some polls in California show the recall race is tightening. What is your take on the recall race?

FRANK NEWPORT, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, GALLUP POLL: Well, we've been looking at that carefully. That has been the conventional wisdom. The Davis people themselves said their internal polling, they won't really show it to you, but they say it showed (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

We can only look at the official polling that comes out, that has been released since the sexual allegations have been published against Arnold Schwarzenegger. And I don't really see a lot of the tightening in these publicly released polls.

Let me show you a couple of them that we're talking about. A Knight-Ridder/NBC 11 poll done with "The Mercury News" out of San Jose south of San Francisco had it at 54 percent. That is the recall passing at 54 percent.

There was a poll that's done using a still different methodology by some people at Stanford and Knowledge Networks, a firm that places computers. It had a 59 percent. No change they said that support for the recall. Both of them don't show any kind of major deminition (ph). Except for that one poll that (UNINTELLIGIBLE) it looked it was narrowing, but those are very small sample sizes.

Same thing here, we look at those two polls that Hoover poll done with "The Mercury" -- done with the Knowledge Network showed Schwarzenegger considerably ahead of the second place contender, for the second question of the ballot. That would be Bustamante.

And this poll over here done by Knight Ridder/NBC and "The Mercury News", 37 to 29 percent, that's an eight-point margin. So wherever you look at it, the latest available publicly polls up to election day still show Schwarzenegger ahead of Bustamante.

But the only poll that matters -- everybody always tells up pollsters, I'll repeat the cliche -- it's what's happening right now, the people voting.

O'BRIEN: It's worth pointing out to our viewers, you made that point to us. We should remind our viewers, that's not exit poll data we're using. We're not going to be using that exit poll material. That is stuff that's been out there already.

Let's shift gears a little bit and move over to the national scene. We've been talking a lot about President Bush's popularity ratings. They've been going down, and yet he's still bringing in the bacon at an amazing clip. He's got one dinner coming up, I think it's a $10 million rubber chicken affair. That implies he's doing very well with the Republican base. True?

NEWPORT: Absolutely true. That will be in Washington, D.C. where he's expected to bring in the ten mills, so to speak. Look among Republicans whose job approval rating, 86 percent, in their last poll. Almost 9 out of 10. Slightly lower, but still, you can't get too much higher than that.

His problem, of course, is independents, he breaks even. And among Democrats, a surprising 16 percent say they approve of the job he's doing. But the base is there and it the base that contributes.

O'BRIEN: Let's talk about the pope, shall we? A lot of people suggested his last trip would probably be his last trip because he seemed so frail.

Nevertheless, he got on a plane, went to Pompeii, visiting a shrine there, conducting a three-hour prayer service. He's an amazing man. I assume his approval ratings remain consistently very high here in the U.S.

NEWPORT: Indeed they do. You said he's an amazing man. Let me show you evidence of that. Gallup since the '40s has been asking who is the person you most admire? This is the male list, living anywhere in the world. And look over all of those years since 1948 it was Billy Graham and Ronald Regan mentioned 45 then 29 times in the top ten. But looks who's third, Pope John Paul II. He's been pope for about 25 years and for 25 years, he's been on that list here at Gallup.

So indeed, among Americans, a widely admired individual.

O'BRIEN: All right, there's some issues that are really subject to debate. Frank Newport at the Gallup poll, always a pleasure to have you drop by.

NEWPORT: You bet.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com







Aired October 7, 2003 - 14;39   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: California voters streaming to the polls today in a recall election that has managed to excite, enrage and outrage everyone from politicians to talk show hosts.
Last-minute accusations of shenanigans by Schwarzenegger have either hurt him or helped him in his challenge to Governor Gray Davis. It depends on which poll you look at. So who better to shake out the facts than our own Frank Newport. Well he's not our own, but he's editor-in-chief of the Gallup Poll. We do visit with his frequently.

Frank, some polls in California show the recall race is tightening. What is your take on the recall race?

FRANK NEWPORT, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, GALLUP POLL: Well, we've been looking at that carefully. That has been the conventional wisdom. The Davis people themselves said their internal polling, they won't really show it to you, but they say it showed (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

We can only look at the official polling that comes out, that has been released since the sexual allegations have been published against Arnold Schwarzenegger. And I don't really see a lot of the tightening in these publicly released polls.

Let me show you a couple of them that we're talking about. A Knight-Ridder/NBC 11 poll done with "The Mercury News" out of San Jose south of San Francisco had it at 54 percent. That is the recall passing at 54 percent.

There was a poll that's done using a still different methodology by some people at Stanford and Knowledge Networks, a firm that places computers. It had a 59 percent. No change they said that support for the recall. Both of them don't show any kind of major deminition (ph). Except for that one poll that (UNINTELLIGIBLE) it looked it was narrowing, but those are very small sample sizes.

Same thing here, we look at those two polls that Hoover poll done with "The Mercury" -- done with the Knowledge Network showed Schwarzenegger considerably ahead of the second place contender, for the second question of the ballot. That would be Bustamante.

And this poll over here done by Knight Ridder/NBC and "The Mercury News", 37 to 29 percent, that's an eight-point margin. So wherever you look at it, the latest available publicly polls up to election day still show Schwarzenegger ahead of Bustamante.

But the only poll that matters -- everybody always tells up pollsters, I'll repeat the cliche -- it's what's happening right now, the people voting.

O'BRIEN: It's worth pointing out to our viewers, you made that point to us. We should remind our viewers, that's not exit poll data we're using. We're not going to be using that exit poll material. That is stuff that's been out there already.

Let's shift gears a little bit and move over to the national scene. We've been talking a lot about President Bush's popularity ratings. They've been going down, and yet he's still bringing in the bacon at an amazing clip. He's got one dinner coming up, I think it's a $10 million rubber chicken affair. That implies he's doing very well with the Republican base. True?

NEWPORT: Absolutely true. That will be in Washington, D.C. where he's expected to bring in the ten mills, so to speak. Look among Republicans whose job approval rating, 86 percent, in their last poll. Almost 9 out of 10. Slightly lower, but still, you can't get too much higher than that.

His problem, of course, is independents, he breaks even. And among Democrats, a surprising 16 percent say they approve of the job he's doing. But the base is there and it the base that contributes.

O'BRIEN: Let's talk about the pope, shall we? A lot of people suggested his last trip would probably be his last trip because he seemed so frail.

Nevertheless, he got on a plane, went to Pompeii, visiting a shrine there, conducting a three-hour prayer service. He's an amazing man. I assume his approval ratings remain consistently very high here in the U.S.

NEWPORT: Indeed they do. You said he's an amazing man. Let me show you evidence of that. Gallup since the '40s has been asking who is the person you most admire? This is the male list, living anywhere in the world. And look over all of those years since 1948 it was Billy Graham and Ronald Regan mentioned 45 then 29 times in the top ten. But looks who's third, Pope John Paul II. He's been pope for about 25 years and for 25 years, he's been on that list here at Gallup.

So indeed, among Americans, a widely admired individual.

O'BRIEN: All right, there's some issues that are really subject to debate. Frank Newport at the Gallup poll, always a pleasure to have you drop by.

NEWPORT: You bet.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com