Dole Drops Back, Poll Finds

The spring quickly went out of Bob Dole’s convention bounce in a tracking poll released Tuesday that found President Clinton back up by 12 percentage points.

ABC News, polling nearly every night since before the start of last week’s Republican National Convention, had found Clinton leading by only 4 points in combined Thursday and Sunday samples: 44 percent of registered voters backed Clinton, 40 percent Dole and 11 percent Ross Perot.

But in a Sunday-Monday sample, Clinton improved to 49 percent, Dole got 37 percent and Perot 10 percent when voters were asked whom they would support if the election were today.

That left Dole statistically no better off than in the last ABC poll conducted before he named Jack Kemp as his running mate and went into the GOP convention.