How Big is Clinton's Lead?

Does President Clinton really lead Robert Dole by 19-20 percentage points, as one set of opinion polls released this week suggests--or just by 9-10 points, as others assert?

Time magazine and CNN combined on a poll conducted on Aug. 7-8 that says Clinton leads Dole by 20 points, 51-31 per cent. But CNN and USA Today combined on another poll just three days later that shows Clinton leading Dole by only 9 points, 53-44 per cent. And ABC and The Washington Post polled registered voters on Aug. 6-9 and found Clinton leading Dole by 10 points, 50-40 per cent.

But ABC's own convention tracking poll conducted during roughly the same time put Clinton's lead at 19 points, 56-37 per cent.

Two polling experts say there's less than meets the eye in the seeming conflict between these polls.

Ed Sarpolus, an independent pollster in Lansing, Mich., who does both national and state polling, said that despite the differences in the polls, he sees an important consistency in all of them.

``What all these polls are telling me is Clinton is still above 50 per cent and that's where an incumbent needs to be,'' Sarpolus said. ``That's why my first impression is `Oh, they're all the same,' but that's not the way most people see it.''

Lee M. Miringoff, director of the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion in New York, said that the biggest movement in the polls is reflected in Dole's improved numbers. ``When Clinton falls below 50 per cent in any of these polls, that would be an eye-opener,'' he said.

The obvious difference between most of the polls is that most of those with the biggest Clinton leads were taken before Dole named former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Jack F. Kemp as his running mate. ``Anything that's pre-Kemp is old,'' Miringoff said.

Nor do all the polls include Ross Perot, the Texas billionaire seeking to run for President again this year as the nominee of the fledgling Reform Party.

Every organization also uses slightly different methods to conduct its poll, and so the quality of results depends greatly upon the way questions are phrased, asked and analyzed. ``Understand that these are different organizations using very different methodologies,'' Miringoff said.

All the recent polls have been taken among registered voters, but Sarpolus and Miringoff emphasized that only half of registered voters will actually go to the polls on Election Day. Poll results may change when pollsters switch their criteria to likely voters this fall, both experts said.