After Prize, Support for Gore Candidacy Remains Limited

GALLUP NEWS SERVICE

PRINCETON, NJ -- Former Vice President Al Gore has added the Nobel Peace Prize to the collection of awards he has won this year, which also includes an Academy Award and an Emmy. Speculation about his presidential intentions has only increased following his Nobel win.

A new USAToday/Gallup poll, conducted this past weekend after Gore was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, shows a slight bump in Gore's favorable rating. There had not been a large groundswell of support for him to run for president prior to last week, and that remains the case. Gore's standing in Gallup's Democratic nomination trial heats is little improved following last week's Nobel Prize announcement -- he remains in third place and his support is no better now than it has been throughout much of this year. Americans are more inclined to say Gore deserved to win the Nobel Peace Prize than to say he did not deserve to win it.

Overall Opinions of Gore

The most visible effect of Gore's win is in the public's overall opinions of him. The Oct. 12-14 poll finds 58% of Americans saying they have a favorable view of Gore, up from 50% in the prior reading taken in August. That is Gore's high favorable rating for the year, and his best in any Gallup Poll since September 2000. Gore's favorable rating had been around 50% most of the year, aside from a brief period in the mid-50% range following his Academy Award victory.

Gallup has tracked opinions of Gore since 1992, and his favorable rating peaked at 64% on two occasions -- immediately following the Democratic National Conventions in 2000 (at which he was nominated for president) and 1992 (at which he was nominated for vice president). Gore's highest unfavorable rating was 52% in December 2000, when he was challenging the Florida presidential election results in the courts.

Democrats have very positive views of Gore, and these views are improved following his Nobel Peace Prize award. Seventy-nine percent of Democrats now have a positive opinion of Gore, compared with 73% in the August survey. 

Even with the improvement, Gore's favorable rating among Democrats is no better than that of Sen. Hillary Clinton, for whom 84% of Democrats have a favorable opinion. But Gore now has a better favorable rating than Sen. Barack Obama and former Sen. John Edwards, who were viewed similarly to Gore by Democrats prior to last week.

Gore for President?

Americans' opinions about Gore as a presidential candidate were changed little by his recent victory, both in terms of the desire to see him enter the race and in Democrats' support for him for the party's 2008 presidential nomination.   

Just 41% of Americans say they would like to see Gore run for president, with the majority, 54%, opposed to a Gore candidacy. That is essentially the same result that Gallup found in March, when 38% expressed a desire for a Gore presidential bid. Even Democrats seem tepid to the idea of Gore running for president -- just 48% favor such a move while 43% are opposed. As one would expect, Republicans (24% in favor) and independents (43%) are mostly opposed to Gore running for president.

In the new update of national Democrats' and Democratic-leaning independents' preferences for the Democratic presidential nomination, 14% select Gore as their first choice when he is included in a list along with the eight announced Democratic candidates. Clinton leads with 44%, while Obama is next at 19%. Gore finishes slightly ahead of Edwards, who is supported by 10% of rank-and-file Democrats. (With Gore support factored out -- Gallup's standard reporting of the Democratic ballot -- Clinton leads Obama by 50% to 21%.)

Preference for the 2008 Democratic Presidential Nomination, With Al Gore Included in the Race
Among National Democrats and Democratic-Leaning Independents

In the pre-Nobel Prize reading of the ballot including Gore, taken Oct. 4-7, 10% of Democrats chose Gore as their first choice, so the win may have increased his support slightly, but the four-percentage-point bump is within the poll's margin of sampling error. Any bump Gore received appears to have come at Obama's expense, who is the only candidate to show evidence of a drop from the prior poll. 

Gore's current 14% support is on the low end of what he has received since February, when the Democratic field largely took shape. He had a high of just 18% in several polls. 

Did He Deserve to Win?

Some critics have questioned the Nobel Committee's selection of Gore for the Nobel Peace Prize, unclear how his campaign to raise awareness of climate change is deserving of a prize usually given in recognition of humanitarian or diplomatic work. Most Americans do not share that skepticism -- 43% say Gore deserved the award, while 26% say he did not and 31% did not have an opinion either way. 

A majority of Democrats, 62%, endorse the selection of Gore, while only 10% question it. Meanwhile, 40% of Republicans say Gore did not deserve to win and only 24% believe that he should have received the award. 

Survey Methods

These results are based on telephone interviews with a randomly selected national sample of 1,009 national adults, aged 18 and older, conducted Oct. 12-14, 2007. For results based on these samples, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum error attributable to sampling and other random effects is ±3 percentage points.

For results based on the sample of 500 Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents, the maximum margin of sampling error is ±5 percentage points.

In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.

Next, we'd like to get your overall opinion of some people in the news. As I read each name, please say if you have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of these people -- or if you have never heard of them. How about --

Al Gore