Gore ahead among Hispanics, but Bush showing strength

Hispanics, the nation's fastest-growing minority, are being heavily courted by both parties in the presidential race.

Democrat Gore led the Republican by 16 points in Knight Ridder's national poll of Hispanics, 50 percent to 34 percent. But Gore was getting less support than President Clinton had in either one of his two presidential races. Clinton won the 1996 election among Hispanic voters by 51 points.

In a survey released earlier this week by Miami pollster Sergio Bendixen, Gore was ahead among Hispanics by 22 points.

Bush campaign spokesman Ari Fleischer said the Texas governor "is making inroads into an important Democratic constituency."

But Gore spokesman Doug Hattaway countered that Hispanic voters see the vice president as "focused on issues they care about like health care and education. The closer they look, the wider the margin will be."

The Knight Ridder poll of more than 2,700 Hispanic registered voters was conducted June 7-13 by ICR of Media, Pa., and has an error margin of plus or minus 2 percentage points.

The Hispanic vote is important mostly because of the role it could play in the four biggest states - California, New York, Texas and Florida. All will be key in the fight for electoral votes this November.

There were more than 21 million Hispanic Americans in March 1999, or 11.7 percent of the nation's population. Political analysts say they are expected to cast about 5 percent of November's presidential vote.

In 1996, President Clinton received 72 percent of the Hispanic vote, compared with 21 percent for Republican nominee Bob Dole and 7 percent for Ross Perot. Four years earlier, Clinton won 62 percent of the Hispanic vote, while then-President Bush, father of the current GOP candidate, received 25 percent and Perot 14 percent.