Poll Woes For Bush (CBS Poll) Kerry/Edwards 50% - W/Cheney 42%--W Approval@ 47%

cbsnews.com ^ | 02/28/04 | CBS/AP

[KQQL]

The four Democrats still officially seeking their party's presidential nod will debate Sunday for the last time before Super Tuesday, even as a new CBS News poll shows President Bush's approval rating slipping below 50 percent for the first time in that survey.

Some 47% of Americans now approve of the way the President is handling his job, while 44% disapprove.

The same poll shows a John Kerry/John Edwards ticket beating one headed by Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney in the fall election, by a margin of 50 percent to 42 percent.

Whether that difference is due more to the appeal of Kerry and Edwards together or suggests weak voter support for Cheney couldn't be determined in this poll.

In addition, it shows both Kerry and Edwards running about even with Mr. Bush in the fall if they ran without the other on their ticket.

Americans continue to express doubts about the situation in Iraq, and point to the economy and jobs as the issues they are most concerned about.

Still, voters said they expect a Bush win in November, although that view is less pervasive than it was in early January. Now, 48% expect Mr. Bush to win, and 42% see a Democrat winning the presidency. In January, 55% expected the president to be re-elected, and just 31% thought the Democratic candidate could prevail.

Kerry holds a wide lead over Edwards in the poll as the choice of Democratic voters both nationwide and in the ten states that vote on Tuesday.

That lead for the nomination is especially strong among those Democrats who say beating the president is more important than agreeing on the issues.

Both Kerry and Edwards have gained public favor since the Democratic campaign began. More Americans hold favorable views of both men than have unfavorable ones.

And in a sign of how much the Democratic race has changed since the first weeks of the year, one-third of Super Tuesday voters say they are former Howard Dean supporters. Today, most of those voters back John Kerry.

"Countdown to Super Tuesday: The Democrats Debate," sponsored by CBS News, WCBS-TV and The New York Times, will bring together Kerry, Edwards, Al Sharpton and Dennis Kucinich in the CBS Broadcast Center in New York.

[ambrose]

See BS...

I see they didn't like the tied head to head numbers, so they added the Kerry/Edwards question to the mix and say "poll woes"...

[LdSentinal]

And if Bush/Cheney is leading Kerry/Edwards among independent voters, there is no way Bush/Cheney is trailing Kerry/Edwards by 8%.

Correction. Bush/Cheney are trailing Kerry/Edward among independents by 3%, but since each ticket is getting 8% from the other party, there is no way to rationale the 8% deficit.

It looks like CBS News/NY Times oversampled the number of Democrats into this poll.

[ambrose]

Interesting how the numbers shift with a Kerry/Edwards ticket over head to heads. Probably meaningless..

[KQQL]

oh well....lol....

[LdSentinal]

This poll roughly has a break down of 29% GOP, 37% DEM and 33% Independent. Thats gives GW Bush just over 42%

Nice analysis on your part.

I hate to say this, but I am looking forward to the next Gallup poll (maybe released this Monday?) to sort out the numbers.

[patriciamary]

You hit the problem right on the head. The Bush admin. need to explain what happened and what are the facts in order to win.

[patriciamary]

I agree. Facts are always distorted,It is up to republicans to get the facts out,or Bush will lose because of job loss.

[pawdoggie]

In order for any of these polls to reflect what will actually happen once the President starts actively campaigning and debating (i.e. once he's really opened the war chest), you would have to poll people who actually know who the hell Kerry and Edwards are (other than that they're the "Democrat Candidate").

[longtermmemmory]

anything CBS reports has to be taken with a pound of salt. If these polls were reaaaaaly true they would be shouting them from the treetops.

[JohnnyZ]

But you forget, the Normans were Anglo Saxon too, and they spoke French.

I forget nothing. Well, sometimes I forget where I put my keys. But on the early history of the English-speaking peoples, I'm pretty good. As for being Anglo-Saxon . . . is that quite right? They were Danish rulers of a (mostly?) Frankish population, although the "Danes" could have been part Danish, part Jutish, some A-S.

Thank goodness for Chaucer, and people like him, who dumped French as the rich-pop language.

Oh yeah: if you're going to use trans-Atlanticisms, I demand equal treatment for trans-Pacificisms, as well as correct usage of regional American terms like 'ayuh'. KAKKATE KOI!

[JohnnyZ]

Sorry, I forgot to blame everything on the Mexicans.

[Ingtar]

I think that Cheney has been so demonized, and his link with Halliburton so distorted, that he is dragging Bush down with the swing voters. Some of the Conservative portions of the Republican party are also disaffected. The hate Bush crowd stays united. Unless he can find some way to appeal to the ones that elected him last time, Bush may end up losing a close race that should have been easy to win.

[Ingtar]

California is unlikely to have Bush on the ballot, unless the Democratic legislature votes in an exception to the rules. Moving the convention to so late in the season to tie it to 911 has cost them the ability to be on the ballot in DC, WV, CA, IL, and AL if they follow the rule of law.

[InvisibleChurch]

nobody is paying attention to politics right now, except of course the liberal media and Free Republic and Rush Limbaugh ... W will be just fine

[ARCADIA]

Do you mean a challenger to GW Bush in the 2004 primaries?? That would be the kiss of death for the general election

How so: and who made the decision?

[Gone_Postal]

Ccrap Bbeing Sspued

[wgeorge2001]

As a Christian and a conservative, I will have to put a clothespin on my nose to vote for the RINO republican party and all those who now control it; they are following the left into communism and have abandoned the once conservative party platform. The Christian conservatives have watched for years hoping that another man who was a republican President would have the good sense to support the base of the party and not only promise but do what they said they were going to do. In my lifetime, I know of only one good President, Ronald Reagon, who tried always to do the things he promised and didn't make backroom deals or try to please the middle left rinos of this country. He was reelected in a landslide.
Perhaps those days are gone. Perhaps the rinos who control the once conservative republican party have been replaced by foolish rinos, it sure looks like it.