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SpeakOut.com Instant Viewer Response Results:
Gore Gets Higher Scores From Swing Voters Than Any Speaker In Either Party; Strongest Support Comes For Patient's Bill of Rights, Social Security and His Self-Deprecations

LOS ANGELES, CA - Thursday, August 17, 2000 - Vice President Al Gore’s acceptance speech tonight hit a homerun with Democrats, with an average score of 79, and, more importantly, swing voters gave Gore scores of 50 or above throughout his entire speech, according to SpeakOut.com’s Instant Response Survey.

In comparison, G.W. Bush scored 50 or above with Independents in only 70% of his speech two weeks ago, based on the same survey techniques.

Women consistently rated Gore’s speech five to ten points higher than did men, with the biggest positive gap among women occurring when Gore talked about the patient’s bill of rights.

The largest gap between scores from Republican and Democratic participants came when Gore compared his tax plan to Bush’s. Republican opinion rallied, however, when Gore talked about balancing the budget.

Republican and Democratic views came together at the end of Gore’s speech when he talked about defending America’s overseas interests.

In addition to expressing approval and disapproval, moment by moment, the 1237 participants in tonight’s focus group were asked what they thought of Gore’s speech, overall. Among swing voters, 60% gave Gore a positive rating, 100% of Democrats rated Gore's speech excellent to good, and 26% of Republicans gave his speech a favorable review.

On specific subjects, Gore scored the highest averages among all those polled when he said "Hands off Medicare and Social Security," he received a 64; when spoke of the patient's bill of rights and assailed the power of the "bean counters" in making life or death decisions, he got a 65; and when he said his own "imperfections" were outweighed by his contention that the presidency is more than a popularity contest, he got a 65.

About the MSNBC/SpeakOut.com Viewer Response Room:

The results of this poll reflect the average opinions of convention watchers who choose to participate in the online, Internet research project. Participants watched the live broadcast of convention proceedings and registered their moment-to-moment reactions using a 0-to-100 scale where zero indicated a very unfavorable reaction, and 100 indicated a very favorable reaction. Although the participants in the Viewer Response Room are not a scientific sample of all American voters, the average results were weighted to reflect the national party identification and gender of all voters.

For complete results of tonight’s SpeakOut.com/MSNBC Internet Dial Poll of Joseph Lieberman’s speech, link here http://www.speakout.com/activism/MSNBC/results/

About SpeakOut.com

Based in Washington, DC, SpeakOut.com  is America’s leading non-partisan Internet activism Web site and online opinion research company. Launched in February 2000, SpeakOut.com’s primary mission is to enhance the democratic process by enabling citizens to have a direct impact on the decisions that affect their lives. Users enjoy a wide variety of news and information tailored to their interests and activism tools allowing aggregated messaging to a vast array of public officeholders, candidates, business and news executives.

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