Kerry Leads by Wide Margin in Times Poll
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Sen. John Kerry, demonstrating the same broad appeal that powered his victory in Iowa, leads by double digits among likely voters in next Tuesday's pivotal New Hampshire primary.
By Ronald Brownstein
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
6:52 PM PST, January 23, 2004
MANCHESTER, N.H. — Sen. John Kerry, demonstrating the same broad appeal that powered his victory in Iowa, leads by double digits among likely voters in next Tuesday's pivotal New Hampshire primary, a new Times poll has found.
Kerry's three principal rivals in the state -- former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark and North Carolina Sen. John Edwards --are locked in a tight struggle for second place that could enormously shape the next stages of the race.
The poll finds that the ground in New Hampshire remains unsettled. Nearly one-in-ten likely voters say they remain undecided. Nearly two-in-five who have picked a candidate say they could still change their mind-exactly the same share who described themselves as open to switching candidates in the final Times poll before the Iowa caucus, where Kerry and Edwards surged to an unexpected one-two finish.
For the Democratic contenders, the stakes in this final sprint are formidable: No candidate who finished lower than second in the New Hampshire primary has won his party's presidential nomination since 1952.
In the poll, Kerry attracted 32% of likely voters, followed by Dean at 19%, Clark at 17%, Edwards at 14% and Sen. Joe Lieberman at 6%. Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio attracted 1%, while Rev. Al Sharpton less than 1%. Ten percent were undecided and another 1% said they preferred someone else.
Dean is being hurt in part because bread-and-butter concerns are eclipsing his signature issue-opposition to the war in Iraq. In the poll, far more voters pick health care (36%) than Iraq (20%) as the issue they most want to hear the candidates discuss; the economy (22%) also now edges Iraq as a priority.
Those who cite both health care and the economy as their top concern give Kerry a solid edge over his rivals. More strikingly, Kerry even leads Dean 33% to 22%, with Clark at 18%, among the voters who say the Iraq war is the principal issue driving their vote.
The Times Poll, supervised by polling director Susan Pinkus, surveyed 1,176 likely Democratic primary voters from January 20 through 23; it has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points. It included 260 interviews on Friday, after the debate.
The poll found relatively little change in voter attitudes on Friday, the day after the candidates' debated for the final time here. Although most respondents said they watched the debate, only 9% of the electorate said it changed their preference-and they scattered between the candidates about evenly.
The results of the Iowa caucus appear to have affected New Hampshire voters somewhat more powerfully: 20% of likely voters said the caucus results influenced their decision, while 79% said it did not. Kerry ran slightly better among those who said the results influenced their decision, while Edwards drew more than twice as much support among those who cited Iowa as a factor than those who did not.
As in the entrance poll conducted in Iowa, Kerry demonstrated extraordinary reach across the party in the Times survey of New Hampshire. Kerry leads among men and women; Democrats and independents (who are allowed to vote in the primary); voters who earn less than $40,000 a year, and those who earn more; liberals and moderates (though he ties with Edwards among the small share who consider themselves conservatives); and voters who live in cities, suburbs and small towns.
Kerry dominates the field among voters without a college education, drawing 39% of their votes, compared to 16% for Clark, his next closest competitor and only 13% for Dean. Kerry even battles Dean evenly among the college-educated voters who have long been the core of the former governor's constituency. In the survey Kerry attracts 27% of college-educated voters, compared to 25% for Dean (a difference well within the margin of error) and 19% for Clark.
In surveys through late last year, Dean held enormous leads over Kerry among New Hampshire college-educated voters, who have long been attracted to candidates, like Dean, who portray themselves as reformers and political outsiders-a lineage that traces from Eugene McCarthy in 1968 to Gary Hart in 1984 and Bill Bradley in 2000.
For Kerry, who long lagged in the polls here amid complaints from voters who found him stiff or aloof, experience and credibility on national security now appear to be his strongest assets in the state. Asked to identify one reason why they are supporting Kerry, 29% of his supporters cited experience, far more than picked anything else. Another 9% cited his military background.
"In the end, looking over all the candidates to see which I thought would make the best president of the United States, that's when I came to Sen. Kerry," said Robert Steenson of Canterbury, the chief operating officer of a service company. "With his [military] service and his record, he seemed the most qualified."
And Kerry led comfortably when voters were asked, regardless of which candidate they supported, which of the contenders they believed "is most qualified to serve as commander in chief."
Thirty-seven percent of those surveyed picked Kerry, placing him well ahead even of Clark, who has built his campaign around his military and foreign policy experience; Clark drew 25%. Just 11% thought Dean was the most qualified to serve as commander-in-chief and only 6% picked Edwards.
For Dean, the poll documents a dramatic acceleration of his decline in New Hampshire since late last year, when polls consistently showed him attracting as much as 40% of the vote or more.
Part of Dean's problem is that disenchantment with Democrats who supported President Bush on the war appears to be fading.
Three-fifths of likely primary voters say they would prefer a Democratic nominee who opposed the war in Iraq; but nearly three-fourths of voters, almost exactly the same percentage as in Iowa, say they are willing to vote for a candidate who doesn't share their view on the war.
That inclination is evident in the striking finding that Kerry now leads Dean by 30% to 25% among those who say they prefer a nominee who opposed the war.
Yet Dean also appears to be suffering from doubts about his temperament and qualifications for president, especially in the aftermath of his manic concession speech in Iowa Monday night. One telling contrast: while 81% of Kerry voters consider him most qualified to serve as commander-in-chief, and 75% of Clark supporters feel he's the most prepared, just 50% of Dean supporters pick him as the most qualified.
Another survey released Friday underscored Dean's problem. The CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll, conducted from Tuesday through Thursday-a period overlapping with the Times Poll-found that only half of likely primary voters said Dean has the personality a president should have; by comparison, 86% of likely voters said Kerry met that test, while about three-quarters believed Clark and Edwards possessed the right temperament for the job.
Dean's decline is measured in voters like Yvonne Howard, a first grade teacher in Warner, NH who responded to the Times poll. For weeks, Howard had displayed a campaign sign for Dean in her yard. "I even gave him money," she says, "although I didn't tell my husband."
But Dean's frenzied concession speech caused Howard to pull the sign from her lawn-and her support from the former front-runner. "I was solidly for Dean until last Monday night," she says. "But I was embarrassed…I thought when he becomes president he is going to hit tougher situations than coming in third in the Iowa [caucus]. If he's going to fly off the handle, I'm not sure that he's the man who would best handle the job."
Despite such defections, the survey offers some hints that Dean may be approaching his floor here. He continues to maintain substantial support, albeit at a reduced level since last fall, among groups that keyed his rise. He runs almost evenly with Kerry among younger voters, union households, liberal Democrats, and college graduates.
When voters were asked, regardless of who they are supporting, which candidate would "substantially change the way things are done in Washington," Dean drew 24%, compared to 21% for Kerry, 14% for Clark and 11% for Edwards.
And the poll found Dean's remaining supporters are more solidly committed to him than those now backing the other candidates. Fully 73% of those backing Dean say they are certain to vote for him-compared to 60% for Kerry, 57% for Clark, and only 44% for Edwards. Asked why they back Dean, his supporters primarily cite his stands on issues: 29% point to health care, and 22% his opposition to the war in Iraq.
Dean's dug-in supporters include voters like Stanley Orzechowski, a retired textile executive who lives in Manchester. Orzechowski still finds Dean bracing and direct, especially in comparison with Kerry, who he still considers somewhat slippery. "I liked the way Dean talked, plain, clear; it impressed me," said Orzechowski, who responded to the poll. "Something just didn't gel for me about Kerry."
Like Kerry, Clark appears to be attracting voters based more on his qualifications than any particular element of his agenda: asked why they support him, 15% cite his military background, 14% of his voters cite experience, while 13% cite the ability to beat Bush.
Robert Sherman of Laconia, a retired engineer, says he likes the clear way Clark speaks and is drawn to him because he thinks he could be as effective as Dwight D. Eisenhower, another general who moved into the Oval Office. "Clark doesn't seem to lose his temper," Sherman says. "He seems to be a very cool collected person."
Edwards, judging by the 56% of his supporters who say they could still change their mind, remains something of a blank slate for many voters here. But he's clearly rising on the radar screen for more of them. Edwards' supporters cite his charisma and the sense that he's a straight shooter as their principal reasons for backing him, and the poll shows those sentiments have enabled him to gain a foothold across the breadth of the party.
Those giving Edwards new attention include voters like Ed Burt, a business consultant now unemployed in New London. Originally, Burt was drawn to Dean because of his opposition to the war. Now he's planning to vote for Edwards. "He is trying to focus attention on issues that have not been addressed by the rest of the Democrats," Burt says. "And he has a positive message; there's been a lot of bickering by the other candidates."
Howard, the schoolteacher who yanked the Dean sign out of her yard, is now torn between Kerry's experience and Edwards' freshness. She's surprised to find those two as her final contenders because she strongly opposed the war in Iraq-a sentiment that initially led her to Dean.
Now in her mind, the two senators' support for the war is being eclipsed by other considerations, such as who is most qualified to serve as president and best positioned to beat Bush.
"I was very much anti-war because I lived through Vietnam," she says. "But I believe Kerry's line that he didn't know it would entail this much, that he didn't know it would be a blank check. And I believe the same with Edwards. I think they were misled too, which allows me to support them."
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