TIMECNN POLL: Most Registered Voters Would Choose Bush

TIMECNN POLL: Most Registered Voters Would Choose Bush Fri Nov 21 2003 19:44:24 ET

New York – If the 2004 Presidential election was held today, registered voters surveyed for TIME/CNN would choose President George W. Bush over any of the declared Democratic candidates.

In a direct run against Bush, Gen. Wesley Clark fares the best among registered voters (Clark 42%, Bush 49%), closely followed by Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry (Kerry 41%, Bush 49%).

Bush would beat any of three other Democrats, 52 percent to 39 percent, in a direct match: Missouri Rep. Dick Gephardt, Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman, or Vermont Gov. Howard Dean. Against Bush, North Carolina Sen. John Edwards would lose, 38 percent to 52 percent.

When registered Democrats are asked which Democratic presidential nominee they would vote for, Dean edges out Clark 14 percent to 12 percent, followed Lieberman (11%), Kerry (9%), Gephardt (6%), then Edwards and the Rev. Al Sharpton (5%).

The TIME/CNN Poll, conducted November 18-19, 2003 by HarrisInteractive, surveyed 1,330 registered voters by telephone. The margin of error is +/-2.7% points for registered voters, and +/-4.7% for Democratic voters surveyed for TIME/CNN.

Hope you've got your body armor on. LOL! Some here are not happy. However, the RATS are furious that President Bush, an evil Republican, did what clinton could not - deliver a prescription drug benefit to seniors. And it is not a trillion dollar bill, as one poster said. It is $400 billion - quite a difference. The RAT senators on the floor are now giving out the phone number of AARP so they can scream to them...too funny.

I've often wondered why most statisticians lack a sense of humor. ;-)

Statistics show that statisticians have a 19% better median sense of humor than programmers, 27% better than engineers, an 8% advantage on doctors and 12% on lawyers. Also, 95% of all statistics are made up.

And for Reuters' spin:

Politics - Reuters
Poll Says U.S. Voters Evenly Split on Bush
Sun Nov 23, 6:31 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A year before the next presidential election, voters in the United States are about where they were in 2000 on the question of President Bush (news - web sites) -- split down the middle -- according to a new poll by Time magazine and CNN.

The poll showed that 47 percent were somewhat likely or very likely to vote to re-elect Bush and 48 percent were somewhat unlikely or very unlikely to do so.

Bush's overall job approval rating was at 52 percent, according to the poll, down from its peak of 89 percent in October 2001, just after the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States. His disapproval rating reached a new high, at 43 percent, the poll said.

Even with rising disapproval ratings, Bush still would defeat any of his possible Democratic opponents if the election was held this year. The poll of 1,507 people, conducted Nov. 18-19, had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.

The Democrat who would give Bush the toughest run for re-election would be retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark (news - web sites), according to the survey's results. Even so, Bush would defeat Clark 49 percent to 42 percent, according to the poll.

Bush would best former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean (news - web sites), the Democratic who has raised the most campaign money to challenge the president, by 59 percent to 39 percent of those polled.

Bush's handling of the U.S. economy and post-war Iraq (news - web sites) are expected to be the two hottest issues of the 2004 presidential campaign.

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