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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Thomas A Watson who wrote (541816)	2/18/2004 9:25:11 AM
From: Kenneth E. Phillipps	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769670

Poll shows Kerry with apparent slight lead over Bush in PA PETER JACKSON Associated Press HARRISBURG, Pa. - Sen. John Kerry has overtaken the other Democratic presidential candidates in the battleground state of Pennsylvania and apparently holds a slight lead over President Bush nine months before the election, a new poll shows. The survey by the Connecticut-based Quinnipiac University Polling Institute showed the senator from Massachusetts favored by 61 percent of Pennsylvania Democrats, compared to only 15 percent for runner-up Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina. Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, the Pennsylvania leader in a similar poll taken in December, had slipped to third place with only 9 percent. In a hypothetical one-on-one match, Kerry was supported by 50 percent of the respondents and Bush by 45 percent. The horse-race results were accompanied by a decline in the president's statewide approval rating to 47 percent - the lowest detected by Quinnipiac since it began polling in Pennsylvania in June 2002 - and signs of widespread concern about the state's economy. Asked to rank the importance of six issues, the largest proportion of respondents - 36 percent - picked the economy. Health care, at 19 percent, also outranked terrorism and the U.S occupation of Iraq, at 14 and 13 percent, respectively. Taxes were cited by 7 percent, and gay marriage by 5 percent. Two-thirds of the respondents said they consider the state's economy not so good or poor. The same proportion said they expect economic conditions to stay the same or worsen in the coming year. "For the first time, a Democrat ... is seen as beating Bush in Pennsylvania. That's a reflection of not only the economy, but politics," said Clay F. Richards, assistant director of the institute. "Kerry is riding the crest of an apparently easy ride to the Democratic nomination while Bush is stuck trying to explain whether he showed up for National Guard duty during the Vietnam War." Pennsylvania's April 27 primary comes too late for the state to attract much attention from candidates for the Democratic nomination. But the fact that Bush has visited the state 25 times so far as president underscores the importance of its 21 electoral votes - the fifth-largest prize - in the general election. The ticket-splitting for which Pennsylvania is famous already was evident in the survey: Twelve percent of the Republicans favored Kerry, and 11 percent of the Democrats supported Bush. Voters not registered in either major party were divided in rough proportion to the overall results. In Pennsylvania's U.S. Senate race, the poll indicated Pennsylvanians were leaning toward the re-election of incumbent Republican Arlen Specter - 44 percent yes to 40 percent no - and 16 percent were undecided. About three-fourths of the electorate said they had not heard enough about either of Specter's prospective foes - conservative U.S. Rep. Pat Toomey in the GOP primary and Democratic U.S. Rep. Joe Hoeffel in the fall - to form an opinion about them. In the survey, 1,356 registered Pennsylvania voters were interviewed by telephone between Feb. 10 and Feb. 16. The overall sampling margin of error is plus or minus three percentage points. For questions asked only of the 501 Democratic respondents, the sampling margin of error was plus or minus 4.5 percentage points.