Dean Leads Dems in Pa. Presidential Poll
Presidential Elections - AP
story.news.yahoo.com
Dean Leads Dems in Pa.
Presidential Poll
Wed Dec 17,10:56 AM ET
By LARA JAKES JORDAN, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - Presidential hopeful Howard Dean sites) is pulling ahead of the Democratic pack among Pennsylvania
voters and is the only candidate to keep President Bush s support under 50 percent, according to a poll released
Wednesday.
The Quinnipiac University poll shows Dean,
the former Vermont governor, holding a
double-digit lead in the Keystone State, the
nation's fifth-largest electoral prize. Dean
nabbed 28 percent of the 1,092 registered
voters surveyed. Undecided accounted for 18
percent of the vote - more than those
supporting any other candidate.
Seventeen percent supported Sen. Joe Lieberman (news - web sites),
Rep. Dick Gephardt ) pulled 10 percent, Wesley Clark
collected 9 percent, and Sen. John Kerry had 7 percent, the poll showed.
Two months ago, Dean held a mere 5 percent of support among state
voters.
Bush led Dean by a margin of 49-43 percent. The president scored 50
percent against Lieberman, Kerry and Clark, and 51 percent against
Gephardt, the poll shows.
A slim majority of Pennsylvania voters is upset with the president for
rolling back steep tariffs on steel imports more than a year before they
were set to expire. The tariffs endeared the Republican president to
politically key Rust Belt states, including Pennsylvania, where
steelmaking remains a dominant industry. Bush scrapped the tariffs in
the face of a $2.2 billion trade war threatened by the European Union
Fifty-two percent of voters said they disapproved of the tariff removal,
while 36 percent approved. Moreover, 18 percent of voters surveyed said
the move makes them less inclined to support Bush's re-election.
The survey was conducted Dec. 11-14 and has a sampling error margin
of plus or minus 3 percentage points. |
