HILADELPHIA - Despite weeks of televised political debates, most Americans still know little about the men who are running for president and even less about some of the issues being debated, a new survey showed yesterday.
A random telephone survey of 4,153 adults, age 18 or older and living in the continental United States, also showed few signs that public understanding will improve as the race for the White House gets into full swing with Iowa caucuses next month.
Public interest in the campaign may actually have waned during the seven weeks between Oct. 25 and Dec. 13, when the data were collected, according to the survey's authors at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Public Policy Center.
With a 3.5 percent margin of error, the survey indicated that about three-quarters of Americans are familiar enough with Texas Governor George W. Bush and Vice President Al Gore to have opinions about the respective Republican and Democratic front-runners.
But only 42 percent claimed to be quite so familiar with Republican Senator John McCain and Democrat Bill Bradley, the main party challengers.
The tepid interest in the race may come as a surprise to members of the Washington political establishment who feel the 2000 presidential election is heating up, researchers said.
''People's familiarity with the candidates is pretty low. A lot of people aren't able to rate them because they don't feel they know enough about them,'' said Paul Waldman, an Annenberg research fellow. ''Even among those who are willing to rate them, a lot don't seem to know very much about them.''
''There are things you might take for granted that people know. But as it turns out, a lot of people don't know. One of the striking things is that still only about 40 percent know that Bradley was a professional basketball player,'' Waldman said.
Only 36 percent know that McCain's current job is in the US Senate, the survey showed.
In some cases, public knowledge about candidates appeared to drop off over the seven-week survey period. For example, the number of people able to identify Bush as a governor slipped within the margin of error from 71 to 68 percent.
''Interest in the campaign has diminished slightly,'' the center concluded in a release. ''The percentage of Americans who say they have been very interested in the campaign so far fell from 21 in late October to 18 in early December.''
The public has long been criticized for apathy toward politics, as reflected in a 1996 voter turnout that at 49 percent was the lowest ever for a presidential election.
In the survey, the public also scored poorly when asked factual questions about issues ranging from taxes and health insurance to abortion and ethanol tax breaks. Sixty-four percent of Americans, or slightly fewer than the number who correctly identified Bush as a governor, knew that the hourly minimum wage is $5.15.
The findings are the first to be released from an ongoing Annenberg 2000 survey that will track public responses through the November 2000 election. The survey is being conducted for the Penn facility by Washington-based Princeton Survey Research Associates.
