AllPolitics - Candidates - Tracking The Candidates

This was another week of virtual campaigning, as TV ads and surrogates again did most of the talking for the candidates. President Bill Clinton spent the beginning part of the week in a hastily-called Mideast summit, then retreated to New York to prepare for this Sunday's debate in Hartford, Conn. Bob Dole emerged from his Florida retreat to hit a few states, then took off back to Florida to finish his own debate prep.

Dole's Week

Dole started off the week with some bad news. Last Saturday, it looked like the race had tightened to nine points in the CNN/USA Today/Gallup tracking poll. But by Monday, the poll was showing a margin of 25 points. What happened? It's just the way tracking polls work -- they're good for trends, not daily results.

The GOP nominee spent Monday immersed in debate prep. He had surrogates such as former U.N. ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick doing heavy hitting on Clinton's foreign policy record; the only peep heard from Dole this day was a mild written statement on the subject.

Tuesday saw Dole in -- you get one guess -- Ohio. His communications director, John Buckley, tells The New York Times, "If you're a voter living in, say, Canton, Ohio, you're going to think you're being stalked by these two candidates." Though it's a battleground state, Dole was largely forced to stay on the rhetorical sidelines while Clinton's summit commenced.

Dole got in some good solid foreign policy hits in a Cleveland Plain Dealer interview published Wednesday morning. Dole himself swung over to Pennsylvania on Wednesday, where he still avoided the Mideast and spent some time letting even more air out of expectations of how he'd do in Sunday's debate.

On Thursday, Dole headed to Tennessee and Georgia, where he mixed a healthy dose of his "Clinton's-a-liberal" message in with attacks on Clinton's foreign policy. Then it was back to Bal Harbour, Fla., for last-minute debate work.

Here's how Charles Cook and Stuart Rothenberg rate the states Dole visited this week:

	Electoral votes	Cook	Rothenberg
Florida Georgia Ohio Pennsylvania Tennessee	25 13 21 23 11	toss-up toss-up leans Dem leans Dem leans Dem	Republican Democratic Democratic Democratic Democratic

Clinton's Week

Clinton had the luxury of spending most of another week as President Clinton rather than as Candidate Clinton.

After a swing through Texas late last week, Candidate Clinton headed to the friendlier territory of Massachusetts and Rhode Island over the weekend. He hit Boston to buck up the tight re-election campaign of Democratic Sen. John Kerry.

But it was back to work for President Clinton on Monday; he responded to fighting in the Mideast by convening a White House summit between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat.

As Clinton huddled with Netanyahu and Arafat on Tuesday and Wednesday, Dole effectively had no one to campaign against.

But the president's sword had a double edge: The summitry severely cut into the time he had set aside to prepare for Sunday's debate.

Candidate Clinton didn't emerge until Thursday, when he reappeared in Jack Kemp Country: Buffalo, N.Y., former Rep. Kemp's old House district. Clinton defended the summit meeting and the rest of his foreign-policy record. He then headed to nearby Chautauqua, N.Y., for some debate cram.

Here's how political analysts Charles Cook and Stuart Rothenberg rate the states Clinton visited this week:

	Electoral votes	Cook	Rothenberg
Massachusetts New York Rhode Island	12 33 4	solid Dem solid Dem solid Dem	Democratic Democratic Democratic

Tracking The Candidates

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