Poll: Bush widening Ariz. lead
GOP, Dems disagree on swing-state label
Jon Kamman and Billy House
The Arizona Republic
Jul. 16, 2004 12:00 AM
A second poll in two weeks indicating that Arizona voters prefer President Bush by 10 to 12 points over John Kerry set Republicans clamoring Thursday that the state isn't as much of a toss-up as has been portrayed.
However, Kerry's campaign declared that it is neither worried nor retreating. Officials pointed to the latest poll's analysis that despite Kerry's slide, Arizona appears to be "still very much in play" because nearly one in five voters was undecided.
The Rocky Mountain Poll results, released Thursday, had Bush at the same level as three months earlier, 46 percent, among registered voters. Kerry dropped 6 points, to 36 percent.
In effect, all of Kerry's loss went into the undecided column, now at 18 percent. The poll's margin of error was plus or minus 4.4 percentage points.
Explanations for Kerry's decline ranged from an improving Arizona economy, to voters' growing faith in Bush's consistency of policy, to Kerry's announcement in Phoenix that he would make immigration reform an early priority of his administration.
Kerry may have raised fears in a state beset by illegal immigration that he would make it easier for undocumented immigrants to gain U.S. citizenship, said Earl de Berge, research director for the Behavior Research Center in Phoenix, which conducted the poll June 30-July 7. The findings were based on a telephone survey of 670 adults, including 515 registered voters.
Bush campaign strategist Matthew Dowd offered a harsher take.
"The more people saw of John Kerry in Arizona, the less they liked him," he said.
On the contrary, Kerry staffers said, the state's voters will warm to the Democratic ticket as they learn more about Kerry and running mate John Edwards, especially during the party's national convention July 26-29 in Boston.
The latest figures differed markedly from an Arizona Republic Poll conducted a month ago but were aligned with a statewide survey performed by Arizona State University two weeks ago.
The Republic Poll, conducted June 10-13, had Bush ahead of Kerry 44 to 41 percent, a statistical dead heat within the margin of error of 4 points. The undecided factor was 11 percent, and 4 percent went for others.
ASU's poll, conducted June 24-27, put Bush's lead at 47-35, with 16 percent undecided. The margin of error was 4.9 points.
In the latest poll, approval of the president's job performance rose by 7 points since April, with 52 percent of respondents rating it "excellent" or "good."
Even before the latest poll was released, the Bush camp was suggesting that a cutback in Kerry-Edwards advertising in Arizona signaled a concession that, in GOP Chairman Bob Fannin's words, "Arizona is Bush country."
But the Kerry-Edwards campaign called such GOP talk dead wrong and declared that Arizona will continue to be among vigorously contested states.
Shifts in the level of advertising are temporary and insignificant, said Sue Walitsky, spokeswoman for the Arizona campaign. She and others said that the state is part of a $1 million Spanish-language ad buy, the largest in presidential campaign history.
,b>Democrats also said Gov. Janet Napolitano's nationally televised convention speech July 27 will serve as a more meaningful appeal than commercials.
Bush strategist Dowd said reductions in advertising come only when "you think you're winning overwhelmingly or you think you're beginning to lose it." He acknowledged, however, that "we don't think we are winning overwhelmingly in Arizona."
Fannin said, "The evidence of recent polls shows that we're pulling ahead. I don't know if the cutback in ads alone indicates that Kerry is giving up. But I wouldn't think they'd cut back the ads if they thought it was a battleground state."
State Democratic Chairman Jim Pederson countered that ad buys amount to a "full flight" and that "Republican efforts to wish us away are just that: wishful thinking."
Douglas Wilson, state chairman of the Kerry-Edwards campaign, said upcoming weeks will prove continuing commitment.
"We're expecting both Kerry and Edwards here many times after the convention," Wilson said.
He said he found evidence in some of the poll's details that older Arizona voters are starting to respond positively to Kerry on health care issues and that other voters are awakening to his messages on issues of education, health and employment.
"There's a strong interest by the voters in Kerry's message of change and hope on issues like education and health care," Wilson said.
He said the Democratic National Committee is assigning six staffers to Arizona, as many as any other targeted state, and "the team is just about complete."
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