THE LOS ANGELES TIMES POLL /
THE RACE TO THE WHITE HOUSE
Voters Shift in Favor of Kerry
Unhappiness with Bush and the nation’s path exceeds doubt about the senator, a survey shows. But in swing states the balance is more tenuous.
It’s their website headline story this morning…
LOS ANGELES TIMES
THE TIMES POLL / THE RACE TO THE WHITE HOUSE
Voters Shift in Favor of Kerry
Unhappiness with Bush and the nation’s path exceeds doubt about the senator, a survey shows. But in swing states the balance is more tenuous.
By Ronald Brownstein
Times Staff Writer
June 10, 2004
WASHINGTON — Widespread unease over the country’s direction and doubts about President Bush’s policies on Iraq and the economy helped propel Sen. John F. Kerry to a solid lead among voters nationwide, according to a new Times poll.
Yet in a measure of the race’s tenuous balance, Times polling in three of the most fiercely contested states found that Bush had a clear advantage over Kerry in Missouri and is even with the presumed Democratic rival in Ohio and Wisconsin.
The surveys suggest that attitudes may be coalescing for a contest that pivots on the classic electoral question at times of discontent: Will voters see more risk in stability or change?
More than one-third of those questioned in the nationwide poll said they didn’t know enough about Kerry to decide whether he would be a better president than Bush. And when asked which candidate was more likely to flip-flop on issues, almost twice as many named Kerry than Bush.
Yet Kerry led Bush by 51% to 44% nationally in a two-way matchup, and by 48% to 42% in a three-way race, with independent Ralph Nader drawing 4%.
Lifting Kerry is a powerful tailwind of dissatisfaction with the nation’s course and Bush’s answers for challenges at home and abroad. Nearly three-fifths believe the nation is on the wrong track, the highest level a Times poll has recorded during Bush’s presidency.
Also, 56% said America “needs to move in a new direction” because Bush’s policies have not improved the country. Just 39% say America is better off because of his agenda.
Majorities disapprove of Bush’s handling of the economy and Iraq, despite recent encouraging news on both fronts.
Such dissatisfaction is moving voters like Joseph Rechtin, a retired postal worker in Cincinnati, toward Kerry, even though the Massachusetts senator has not yet made a very sharp impression on him.
“I haven’t seen that much that [Kerry] can provide us real leadership,” Rechtin said. “But it’s more than three years now, and we don’t seem to be going anywhere at all, and this involvement in Iraq is taking us down the wrong path. So I definitely feel we need a leadership change.”
The surveys showed that Bush still enjoyed significant political strengths, including virtually undivided support from his base and continued admiration for his handling of the struggle against terrorism. Nationally, his general approval rating is just above 50% — the mark that has divided the winners from the losers in recent presidential elections involving an incumbent.
His assets are enough for Bush to maintain a double-digit advantage in Missouri with Nader in the mix, and to remain essentially even with Kerry in Ohio and Wisconsin, even though majorities in each state say the country should change direction.
“Bush is a very strong person, and that’s what we need for a president,” said Harley Wilber, a machine operator in Milwaukee and a Vietnam veteran. “If we had Kerry … in there, [he] would be kind of wishy-washy.”
The Times Poll, supervised by polling director Susan Pinkus, interviewed 1,230 registered voters in the national sample, as well as 566 registered voters in Missouri, 722 in Ohio and 694 in Wisconsin from Saturday through Tuesday. The margin of sampling error for the national sample is plus or minus 3 percentage points; for the state polling it is plus or minus 4 percentage points.
The view of Bush as a strong leader is a powerful motivator for his supporters: Among the voters who express a favorable opinion of him, as many cite strong leadership as any other factor in explaining their opinion.
Michelle Mann, a stay-at-home mother in Oklahoma City, said she saw Bush as “a resolute man, and he is doing what he firmly believes is the right thing to do” without worrying about political consequences or reactions from other nations.
She added: “As long as it is best for the American people, he is willing to go the distance.”
Yet the national poll found that Kerry had erased Bush’s earlier advantage on leadership skills, blunting one of the core arguments for the president’s reelection.
Asked which candidate “will be a strong leader for the country,” voters divided exactly in half, with 44% choosing each; in a Times’ poll in March, Bush held a 9-percentage-point lead on that question.
Also, while Bush narrowly led in March when voters were asked which candidate “has the honesty and integrity to serve as president,” the two now are essentially tied, with Bush attracting 41% and Kerry 40%.
On other personal attributes, the poll indicates that Americans are making clear distinctions about the two candidates’ strengths and weaknesses.
By 50% to 31%, those polled said Bush would be best at “keeping the country safe from terrorism.” By 45% to 36%, Bush was picked over Kerry when voters were asked which man shared their moral values. Perhaps most troubling for the Democrat, nearly half said Kerry “flip-flops on the issues,” while just a quarter applied that description to Bush.
But for Bush, the flip side of the flip-flop charge is a deepening perception that he is too rigid: By a resounding 58% to 16%, poll respondents said the phrase “too ideological and stubborn” applied more to Bush than to Kerry.
Bill Baggett, a retired accountant in Commerce Township, Mich., said he preferred Kerry’s willingness to change his mind over what he saw as Bush’s intransigence. Kerry’s flexibility, Baggett said, “to me is a sign of intelligence.”
Voters also preferred Kerry by about 10 percentage points when asked which man had better ideas for improving the economy and a better chance of building “respect for the United States around the world.”
Kerry has established these advantages even while voters are just filling in their portrait of him. More than one-third of them — and nearly half of independents — said they did not know enough about Kerry “to decide whether he would be a better president” than Bush. Just 53% said they knew a great deal or even a fair amount about Kerry’s domestic policies; only 42% felt that way about his foreign policies.
Yet Kerry has planted some flags with the public. He has been criticized by some Republicans and veterans over his activities during the Vietnam War era, when he enlisted in the Navy but protested the war after returning from combat. But nearly three-fifths of those surveyed agreed that “in his combat missions in Vietnam, John Kerry demonstrated qualities America needs in a president.” Just one-third said that in protesting the war, “Kerry demonstrated a judgment and belief that is inappropriate in a president.”
Those answers may help explain Kerry’s strong showing on what is likely to be a critical test in the election: 59% said they were very or somewhat confident he would be a good commander in chief; just 38% expressed doubts.
One of Bush’s assets is some voters’ belief that he has been a strong commander in chief on one front: 54% approve of his performance in the war on terrorism.
But on the economy, 54% of voters disapprove of his performance, while 43% approve. That’s virtually unchanged from March, despite several months of strong job growth.
Eventually, that growth may boost Bush. But for now, 52% of voters said they believed Bush’s economic policies had hurt the economy, while just 22% said his actions had improved it.
On Iraq, 44% approve of his performance, while 55% disapprove. That’s down sharply from March, when a slight majority backed him on this issue. The new poll also found that only 35% believed Bush had “offered a clear plan” to achieve success in Iraq, while 44% said he had not.
Bush scores better on his overall approval rating, partly because of his continuing strength on the terrorism issue and partly because of his virtually unanimous support from Republicans and independents who consider themselves conservative. In the new poll, 51% approved of his performance while 47% disapproved, down only slightly since March.
Over the last 50 years, presidents who have won another term have generally enjoyed approval ratings about 55% or more by this point in the election year, while those who lost had fallen below 50%. So Bush finds himself on the cusp.
Bush also is bolstered by solid leads among culturally conservative groups that have favored Republicans over the last generation: married couples, rural voters, those who attend church services regularly (especially whites) and gun owners.
But Kerry has unified Democrats, muted the traditional GOP advantage among men and opened a narrow edge among suburbanites.
Kerry also performs well among many groups that his party’s nominees have traditionally relied upon: women, singles, those who attend religious services rarely or never and lower-income families.
In a three-way race, Nader has little effect on these dynamics.
With Kerry still an opaque figure for many, Bush looms as the clear fulcrum of this race. More than 80% who approve of the president’s performance said they would vote for him; more than 90% who disapprove said they would pull the lever for change.
GRAPHICS:
Matchup nationwide and in three states
http://www.latimes.com/news/custom/timespoll/la-061004poll-g,1,5976588.graphic?coll=la-home-headline
s
Bush or Kerry? What the polls say now, and an interactive map to test your own scenarios.
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-polldatapage.htmlstory
WASHINGTON POST
Economy Provides No Boost for Bush
Foreign Policy Concerns Hurt Approval Ratings
By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 10, 2004; Page A01
The nation’s economy is growing smartly, wages have begun to rise, and employers have added more than 1.4 million jobs to their payrolls in the past nine months. Yet voters continue to give President Bush poor ratings on his handling of the economy.
It may sound baffling, but interviews with voters, pollsters and economists suggest Bush’s stubborn difficulties on domestic policy boil down to an obvious problem abroad.
“It all goes back to Iraq,” said Steven Valerga, 50, a Republican in Martinez, Calif., who voted for Bush in 2000 but plans to vote for Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) in November. “It’s a drain on the economy, when there’s so much needed elsewhere. My gosh, we didn’t need to be there.”
War has usually been good for the economy in the short run, and this one appears no different. In the first three months of this year, defense work accounted for nearly 16 percent of the nation’s economic growth, according to the Commerce Department.
But amid the car bombings, assassinations and continuing casualties, voters are generally pessimistic about the direction the nation is taking. Bush’s negative ratings are rising not just on the economy but also on energy policy, foreign affairs and his handling of the prescription drug issue. Voters fixated on Iraq so far are not willing to see the improving economy through a positive prism, according to pollsters and Bush campaign aides.
“There’s a general anxiety that is at heart about security,” said Bush campaign spokesman Terry Holt, “and that’s why security is so central to the campaign. Security underlies our feelings about prosperity.”
Bush’s ratings have not just been impervious to good economic news; they have fallen with it. In April 2003, 52 percent of voters approved of his handling of the economy, although at that time payrolls had not pulled out of a skid that began in March 2001.
By late May, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll, the president’s approval rating on the economy had slipped to 44 percent, with 54 percent disapproving. By then, virtually every economic indicator was heading skyward.
Conversations about the economy gravitate to foreign policy, and voters find the corrosive influence of war in the most unlikely places.
To Valerga, the fighting has driven up the cost of the plywood he needed to redo his roof. Clint Doherty, a small-business man in Clarkston, Wash., sees the war in stainless-steel bolts, which have risen in price by more than 120 percent in a month and a half. To Jeremy Tuck, 31, a Republican in Hamilton, Ala., standing by Bush, it has sucked taxpayer dollars away from where it is needed: “We’re spending $150 billion on the war. That’s what’s hurting us.”
For numerous voters, it is the nagging sense that a president consumed with foreign affairs no longer cares about the plight of citizens at home. Jodie Flickinger, 52, a lifelong Republican in Columbia, S.C., recalled being taken aback by economic conditions during a Memorial Day weekend trip to her native Youngstown, Ohio.
“I think he gets more joy, he gets a bigger rush, out of doing world war,” she said of Bush. “The United States economy just bores him or confuses him, I guess.”
Patricia Smith, 70, a Republican in Newport News, sensed the same problem: “He’s gotten so overwhelmed with these other things that he’s forgotten what he promised he would do for us.”
Bush is not the first president to suffer from a disconnect between objective economic indicators and voter perceptions on the economy. The economy began growing steadily in March 1991, when President George H.W. Bush registered a 49 percent approval rating on his handling of the economy. But by July of 1992, those approval ratings had slid to an abysmal 25 percent, presaging his electoral defeat three months later.
By October 1994, economic growth had climbed to a healthy 4 percent, and unemployment had slid from 7.5 percent in 1992 to 6.1 percent. Yet President Bill Clinton’s economic job approval ratings were stuck at 43 percent, with 52 percent disapproving. The GOP swept into power on Capitol Hill the next month. It was not until June 1996, more than five years into the longest peacetime economic expansion in history, that Clinton’s approval ratings on the economy turned solidly positive.
“Americans are a show-me people,” said Karlyn Bowman, a public opinion expert at the American Enterprise Institute. “They need to be shown that things have actually been changed, and I think in an economic recovery, this means seeing the guy down the street getting his job back rather than good jobs numbers.”
For President Bush, the disconnect has been far more pronounced. Over the course of this year, according to Gallup polling, disapproval of Bush’s handling of the economy has risen in lock step with the economy’s performance, from 43 percent in early January to 58 percent. “It may be hard to evince positive responses to anything we ask them,” conceded Frank Newport, Gallup’s polling director.
For Republicans, frustration is beginning to show. Last week, when the Labor Department announced that an additional 248,000 jobs had been created in May, House Ways and Means Committee Republicans e-mailed reporters, blaring, “It’s a Booming Economy, Stupid.”
But John R. Zaller, a political scientist at the University of California at Los Angeles, suggested that voters may not be stupid. They just may have considerably sharper antennae than economists.
In the fall of 2000, when most economic indicators continued to surge, anxiety among voters began to take a toll on Democrat Al Gore’s White House bid, Zaller said. That anxiety proved to be prescient: By the spring of 2001, the economy had slipped into recession.
This go-round, jobs are coming back, but Americans may sense that those jobs are not of the same quality as the work that was lost, Newport said. Any good economic news is being tempered by high gasoline prices, and a generally sour mood has made voters skeptical.
“My dad told me when I was growing up that figures lie and liars figure,” Flickinger scoffed.
For Bush, that sensitivity is compounded by the war in Iraq, Zaller said. Most economists and political scientists look to the economy to determine an election’s outcome, but foreign policy events can knock or add as much 3 percentage points to an incumbent’s vote. President Jimmy Carter may have been sunk in 1980 by the disastrous, failed rescue attempt of U.S. hostages in Iran.
For Bush, that sensitivity to foreign affairs is not all bad. Maria Sandoval, an elderly Democrat in Colorado Springs, has had a rough time of it in the past few years, living solely on Social Security and relying on the county clinic for her health care. On the economy, Bush “hasn’t done very good,” she allowed. He could have offered more help, she said, and his prescription drug law does not promise her much, either.
But Bush has her vote, she said firmly. “I guess he hasn’t put too much into [the economy], but he’s busy with a lot of other things. He’s on top of everything. That’s what I like about him.”
During the Clinton years, Jeremy Tuck said he had been selling mobile homes in Tuscaloosa, Ala., and, at $45,000 a year, making good money. Last year, he was assembling mobile homes, earning $15,000 and living hand-to-mouth. But Bush has his vote this November. Had Gore been elected in 2000, Tuck said, “we would’ve been taken over by Saddam Hussein or [Osama] bin Laden.”
“You make more money in plain terms when Democrats are in office,” Tuck said with a shrug, “but Republicans are stronger on the military, and that’s why I’m voting for President Bush.”
WASHINGTON POST
Economy Provides No Boost for Bush
Foreign Policy Concerns Hurt Approval Ratings
By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 10, 2004; Page A01
The nation’s economy is growing smartly, wages have begun to rise, and employers have added more than 1.4 million jobs to their payrolls in the past nine months. Yet voters continue to give President Bush poor ratings on his handling of the economy.
It may sound baffling, but interviews with voters, pollsters and economists suggest Bush’s stubborn difficulties on domestic policy boil down to an obvious problem abroad.
“It all goes back to Iraq,” said Steven Valerga, 50, a Republican in Martinez, Calif., who voted for Bush in 2000 but plans to vote for Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) in November. “It’s a drain on the economy, when there’s so much needed elsewhere. My gosh, we didn’t need to be there.”
War has usually been good for the economy in the short run, and this one appears no different. In the first three months of this year, defense work accounted for nearly 16 percent of the nation’s economic growth, according to the Commerce Department.
But amid the car bombings, assassinations and continuing casualties, voters are generally pessimistic about the direction the nation is taking. Bush’s negative ratings are rising not just on the economy but also on energy policy, foreign affairs and his handling of the prescription drug issue. Voters fixated on Iraq so far are not willing to see the improving economy through a positive prism, according to pollsters and Bush campaign aides.
“There’s a general anxiety that is at heart about security,” said Bush campaign spokesman Terry Holt, “and that’s why security is so central to the campaign. Security underlies our feelings about prosperity.”
Bush’s ratings have not just been impervious to good economic news; they have fallen with it. In April 2003, 52 percent of voters approved of his handling of the economy, although at that time payrolls had not pulled out of a skid that began in March 2001.
By late May, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll, the president’s approval rating on the economy had slipped to 44 percent, with 54 percent disapproving. By then, virtually every economic indicator was heading skyward.
Conversations about the economy gravitate to foreign policy, and voters find the corrosive influence of war in the most unlikely places.
To Valerga, the fighting has driven up the cost of the plywood he needed to redo his roof. Clint Doherty, a small-business man in Clarkston, Wash., sees the war in stainless-steel bolts, which have risen in price by more than 120 percent in a month and a half. To Jeremy Tuck, 31, a Republican in Hamilton, Ala., standing by Bush, it has sucked taxpayer dollars away from where it is needed: “We’re spending $150 billion on the war. That’s what’s hurting us.”
For numerous voters, it is the nagging sense that a president consumed with foreign affairs no longer cares about the plight of citizens at home. Jodie Flickinger, 52, a lifelong Republican in Columbia, S.C., recalled being taken aback by economic conditions during a Memorial Day weekend trip to her native Youngstown, Ohio.
“I think he gets more joy, he gets a bigger rush, out of doing world war,” she said of Bush. “The United States economy just bores him or confuses him, I guess.”
Patricia Smith, 70, a Republican in Newport News, sensed the same problem: “He’s gotten so overwhelmed with these other things that he’s forgotten what he promised he would do for us.”
Bush is not the first president to suffer from a disconnect between objective economic indicators and voter perceptions on the economy. The economy began growing steadily in March 1991, when President George H.W. Bush registered a 49 percent approval rating on his handling of the economy. But by July of 1992, those approval ratings had slid to an abysmal 25 percent, presaging his electoral defeat three months later.
By October 1994, economic growth had climbed to a healthy 4 percent, and unemployment had slid from 7.5 percent in 1992 to 6.1 percent. Yet President Bill Clinton’s economic job approval ratings were stuck at 43 percent, with 52 percent disapproving. The GOP swept into power on Capitol Hill the next month. It was not until June 1996, more than five years into the longest peacetime economic expansion in history, that Clinton’s approval ratings on the economy turned solidly positive.
“Americans are a show-me people,” said Karlyn Bowman, a public opinion expert at the American Enterprise Institute. “They need to be shown that things have actually been changed, and I think in an economic recovery, this means seeing the guy down the street getting his job back rather than good jobs numbers.”
For President Bush, the disconnect has been far more pronounced. Over the course of this year, according to Gallup polling, disapproval of Bush’s handling of the economy has risen in lock step with the economy’s performance, from 43 percent in early January to 58 percent. “It may be hard to evince positive responses to anything we ask them,” conceded Frank Newport, Gallup’s polling director.
For Republicans, frustration is beginning to show. Last week, when the Labor Department announced that an additional 248,000 jobs had been created in May, House Ways and Means Committee Republicans e-mailed reporters, blaring, “It’s a Booming Economy, Stupid.”
But John R. Zaller, a political scientist at the University of California at Los Angeles, suggested that voters may not be stupid. They just may have considerably sharper antennae than economists.
In the fall of 2000, when most economic indicators continued to surge, anxiety among voters began to take a toll on Democrat Al Gore’s White House bid, Zaller said. That anxiety proved to be prescient: By the spring of 2001, the economy had slipped into recession.
This go-round, jobs are coming back, but Americans may sense that those jobs are not of the same quality as the work that was lost, Newport said. Any good economic news is being tempered by high gasoline prices, and a generally sour mood has made voters skeptical.
“My dad told me when I was growing up that figures lie and liars figure,” Flickinger scoffed.
For Bush, that sensitivity is compounded by the war in Iraq, Zaller said. Most economists and political scientists look to the economy to determine an election’s outcome, but foreign policy events can knock or add as much 3 percentage points to an incumbent’s vote. President Jimmy Carter may have been sunk in 1980 by the disastrous, failed rescue attempt of U.S. hostages in Iran.
For Bush, that sensitivity to foreign affairs is not all bad. Maria Sandoval, an elderly Democrat in Colorado Springs, has had a rough time of it in the past few years, living solely on Social Security and relying on the county clinic for her health care. On the economy, Bush “hasn’t done very good,” she allowed. He could have offered more help, she said, and his prescription drug law does not promise her much, either.
But Bush has her vote, she said firmly. “I guess he hasn’t put too much into [the economy], but he’s busy with a lot of other things. He’s on top of everything. That’s what I like about him.”
During the Clinton years, Jeremy Tuck said he had been selling mobile homes in Tuscaloosa, Ala., and, at $45,000 a year, making good money. Last year, he was assembling mobile homes, earning $15,000 and living hand-to-mouth. But Bush has his vote this November. Had Gore been elected in 2000, Tuck said, “we would’ve been taken over by Saddam Hussein or [Osama] bin Laden.”
“You make more money in plain terms when Democrats are in office,” Tuck said with a shrug, “but Republicans are stronger on the military, and that’s why I’m voting for President Bush.”