Bush Leads Kerry in 3 Key States
By Ronald Brownstein and Kathleen Hennessey
Times Staff Writers
August 26, 2004, 4:53 PM EDT
WASHINGTON -- President Bush has moved past Sen. John F. Kerry in three of the most hotly contested Midwestern battleground states despite continued doubts about the country's direction and the president's policies, new Los Angeles Times polls have found.
According to the surveys, Bush has opened leads within the margin of error in Ohio, Wisconsin and Missouri — states at the top of both campaigns' priority lists.
In Missouri, Bush leads among registered voters 46% to 44%; in Wisconsin, he leads 48% to 44%; and in Ohio, the president holds a 49% to 44% advantage, the surveys found.
Like a national Times poll released Wednesday, the surveys underscore the difficulty Kerry has had converting a general desire for change into support for his candidacy. The Massachusetts senator trails Bush even though a majority of voters in all three states said the country is not better off because of Bush's policies and "needs to move in a new direction."
But while Bush is drawing support from virtually all the voters who back his policy direction, Kerry is attracting only about four-fifths or fewer of the voters in the three states who said they want a new course.
Voters like Barb Chiamulera — a special education teacher from Florence, Wis., who responded to the poll — remain torn between disappointment in Bush and uncertainty about Kerry.
"It seems like we're kind of at a dead end," she said of Bush's presidency. "But I just feel I don't know Kerry's philosophy as well as I should. I still don't really feel like he's come up with any definite plan for what he would do and how he would change things."
The Times Poll, supervised by director Susan Pinkus, contacted 507 registered voters in Ohio, 580 in Missouri, and 512 in Wisconsin from Aug. 21-24. It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus four percentage points for each state.
In 2000, Al Gore carried Wisconsin by fewer than 6,000 votes; Bush won Missouri by almost 80,000 votes and Ohio by almost 167,000 votes.
All three states have attracted enormous spending on television ads from the two candidates and the independent groups supporting them.
Times polls in June showed Kerry and Bush tied in Wisconsin, Kerry holding a statistically insignificant one-point advantage in Ohio, and the president leading 48% to 42% in Missouri. Compared to those numbers, the race has tightened somewhat in Missouri and edged slightly toward Bush in Wisconsin and Ohio.
Wisconsin and Ohio are among three states where a group of anti-Kerry Vietnam veterans has run ads accusing him of lying to win his medals in Vietnam. The ads did not air in Missouri. Fully 56% of voters in Wisconsin and 58% in Ohio say they have seen the ads from Swift Boats Veterans for Truth, more than the 47% in Missouri or 48% nationally.
As with this week's national poll, a majority of the voters surveyed in each state rejected the allegations that Kerry had misrepresented his service record. Those charges have been forcefully challenged over the past week by a succession of eyewitness accounts and official documents mostly confirming Kerry's version of events. But many voters remain uncertain.
In Wisconsin, 55% of voters said they thought Kerry had earned his medals, while 16% believed he had misrepresented his service; the rest were either unsure or unaware of the controversy. In Missouri, 54% said they accepted Kerry's version, 17% sided with the critics. In Ohio, the balance didn't tilt quite as strongly for Kerry, but even there 51% said they accepted his version while 20% did not.
"He went and he fought for us and that's all that matters," said Doug Redd, a union carpenter from Portsmith, Ohio, who voted for Bush in 2000 but now backs Kerry. "I don't care if he got that Purple Heart when he tripped over a branch. He fought for us."
The surveys also show that voters in all three states pick Bush over Kerry when asked which man is most likely to develop a plan to succeed in Iraq and who would be more qualified to serve as commander in chief. Voters in all three states also gave Bush a big lead when asked which would best protect the nation from terrorism.
"I feel confident George Bush is an adult and he takes his job seriously," said Tom Kelly, an equipment operator in Cudahy Wis. "As far his Number One duty to protect citizens, I feel he's doing everything in his power to do that."
By narrow margins in Wisconsin and Ohio, and a wider margin in Missouri, more voters picked Bush when asked which candidate shares their moral values. And, as in the national poll, far more voters pick Kerry than Bush when asked which man is most likely to flip-flop on issues.
But warning signs for the president continue to flicker through the poll.
In Ohio, Bush's overall approval rating remained mired at 47%, unchanged from June, with 50% disapproving. And in Missouri and Wisconsin, slightly more voters disapproved than approved of his handling of the economy; the dissatisfaction peaked in Ohio, which has lost 230,000 jobs since Bush took office, with 52% disapproving. "Our jobs are going overseas faster and faster, and he doesn't even care," said Redd.
Copyright © 2004, The Los Angeles Times
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