Bush team confident in steady poll results
By Anne E. Kornblut, Globe Staff | April 21, 2004
WASHINGTON -- Senior officials in the Bush reelection campaign are expressing growing confidence that the president has weathered weeks of rocky national security news -- and may even have benefited from it -- amid polls indicating that President Bush is holding steady against the likely Democratic challenger, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts.
Political strategists in both parties had anticipated problems for Bush from a series of dramatic developments, including the harsh claims in a book by former terrorism czar Richard A. Clarke that the administration had failed to address terrorism and rushed to war against Saddam Hussein; the testimony of the national security adviser and other officials before the Sept. 11 Commission; and the bloody insurgencies and US casualties in Iraq.
But at a minimum, Bush appears to have held his ground. His advisers attribute the durability of his standing in part to an aggressive $40 million advertising blitz last month and his overwhelming head-start in fund-raising, which have helped neutralize negative events as long as the overall focus is on national security.
Campaign advisers are so convinced that national security issues play to Bush's strength that they have posted a link on the Bush-Cheney reelection website to the new book by Bob Woodward, ''Plan of Attack," despite several disputes they have over facts and a portrayal of Bush as driven to war by an unrelenting Vice President Dick Cheney without input from Secretary of State Colin L. Powell.
''Despite pundit speculation that the president had been weakened over the course of the last month, the president's ballot position has improved," Matthew Dowd, chief strategist for the campaign, wrote to other campaign leaders in a memo that was made public yesterday.
But Democrats are skeptical. They contend that at best Bush's poll standing has stabilized after sliding during the first three months of the year, and they question why, after spending tens of millions on ads in recent weeks, Bush is still locked in such a tight race with Kerry. A spokesman for the Democratic National Committee accused Republicans of having ''glossed over" the poll results, plucking out positive information from data that otherwise show Bush's approval rating trending downward.
''We've known all along this will be a neck-and-neck race," Kerry adviser Michael Meehan said. ''One thing is true in all of this: Bush has spent $55 million in negative attack ads, and the best he can find is he's running neck-and-neck against somebody they say nobody knows."
At the same time, Kerry advisers point to their fund-raising success -- $54.8 million in the first quarter of this year, a record take in campaign history, of which $42.8 million was raised last month alone -- as evidence they will be able to dissolve Bush's fund-raising advantage in the months to come.
Forty-seven percent of the registered voters in an ABC-Washington Post poll said they disapprove of the way Bush is handling his job as president, compared with 51 percent who approve. On a range of specific issues, from the economy to Iraq, more voters said they disapprove of his performance than approve of it.
But it was just weeks ago that Kerry held an advantage on those issues and several more -- a lead that is now gone in every area except health care. In the fight against terrorism, Bush retained his strong lead over Kerry. On the economy, the voters surveyed said they trust the two candidates about evenly to handle the economy -- a dramatic slip for Kerry, who held a lead when the economy was in the spotlight last month.
Overall, both that poll and one by CNN/USA Today/Gallup gave Bush a slight edge in a three-way race with Kerry and independent Ralph Nader, who drew 4 percent to 7 percent in both polls. In the ABC-Washington Post poll, registered voters chose Bush by 48 percent, with 43 percent selecting Kerry and 6 percent supporting Nader. In the CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll, Bush led Kerry among likely voters 50 percent to 44 percent, with 4 percent supporting Nader. Even without Nader in the race, Bush beat Kerry, 51 percent to 46 percent.
Dowd, the Bush strategist, said Nader appears to be stealing votes from Kerry rather than Bush. But ultimately, Dowd said, Nader's strength is more a reflection of Kerry's weakness.
Bush, raising money for other Republicans yesterday in upstate New York, made light of the political challenge. ''I'm looking forward to the campaign," he told an audience at the River Club in Manhattan during a fund-raiser that pulled in $3.75 million. ''There's somebody looking at me like, 'Do you really mean that?' I am. I like to campaign. I'm a competitive kind of person. I've got a lot of mother in me."
Anne Kornblut can be reached at akornblut@globe.com
© Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company |
