 What makes Dole different from the other candidates?
But Ames failed to resolve the fate of the candidates who came in third and fourth--Elizabeth Dole and Gary Bauer--and the one who skipped Ames, John McCain. For these three, the post-game spin contest is crucial. Here's a playback of their takes on the straw poll results and a look ahead at their playbook of messages for the remainder of the race. Dole needed to get within striking distance of Bush and to seal off the rest of the pack behind her. On Meet the Press , Face the Nation , and Late Edition , she boasted that she had cracked "the top three." Pundits bought the three-winners line, treating Ames as a horse race ("win, place, and show") and noting that "no one's ever won the Republican nomination without finishing in the top three" at Ames. Newspapers, cramped for space, confined their headlines to Bush, Forbes, and Dole. Though Dole's 14 percent was closer to Bauer's 9 than to Forbes' 21, she earned a "solid third" and a place among the leaders by crossing the "double-digit" threshold. As Fox News' Carl Cameron put it: "The other seven candidates could not crack double digits." The Boston Globe called Dole "the winner of this contest-within-the-contest." Dole touted her "victory" on every talk show and cited the Myers and Globe quotes in a press release. At a news conference, an aide introduced Dole as the straw poll's "real winner." In every TV interview, Dole claimed to have been "outspent by millions of dollars." Her spokesman told reporters that "on a dollar-per-vote basis, Elizabeth Dole trounced George Bush and Steve Forbes." "From a strict cost-benefit standpoint, the big winner may be Elizabeth Dole," concluded Time . Dismissive coverage of Dole before the straw poll played to her advantage, as everyone marveled at her "surprisingly" strong third. "Dole Revived," the Washington Post 's front page proclaimed. Forbes wants to fast-forward the GOP tournament to a finals bracket: To prevent this, Dole needs to create a semifinal playoff--Forbes vs. Dole--to determine who gets to play Bush. Instead, "he finished closer to Dole than to Bush." Having narrowed the field to three, Dole needs to focus the contest on criteria that favor her. The first of these is political experience, of which Bush has little and Forbes has almost none.
 A certain part of her identity might make her sympathetic to the voters in a way that would not work for the other candidates
 Dole had significant financial backing from the fruit company of the same name  She's more conservative than the others  She's more sympathetic to the voters because of her upbringing  A certain part of her identity might make her sympathetic to the voters in a way that would not work for the other candidates