Despite his questionable prediction of a Kerry victory in November, Zogby's
latest poll numbers still show Bush with a 52% favorability rating. Any way
you spin it, 52% still means a win in November. By comparison, Bush's dad
had only a 39% rating at this point...and the dad had to worry about a
viable third candidate who ended up siphoning a lot of his votes. Kerry
simply lacks the charisma to lure a voter who still has a favorable rating
of Bush.





"Harry Krause" wrote in message
news:c3dhc2g=.715f607aa1b7e8bae0082de7c3b433d2@108 4808559.nulluser.com...
Kerry pulls ahead of Bush in new poll

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry (news -
web sites) topped President George W. Bush (news - web sites) in a new
opinion poll, one day after a separate survey showed a majority of
Americans for the first time disapprove of Bush's leadership.




The Time/CNN poll showed 51 percent of likely voters favored Kerry, a
Massachusetts senator, over the Republican president, who had 46 percent
of support.

With the addition of independent candidate Ralph Nader (news - web
sites), who ran for the Green Party in 2000, in the survey, Kerry was
favored by 49 percent of voters and Bush by 44 percent. About 6 percent
said they would vote for Nader.

The poll has a plus or minus 4.1 percentage point margin of error. The
poll interviewed 1,001 people, including 563 likely voters, on May 12-13.

A Newsweek magazine poll on Saturday showed that Bush's job approval
rating had dropped to 42 percent, down from 49 percent in April. And for
the first time since he took office in January 2001, a majority of
Americans, 52 percent, disapprove of him, according to the poll.

The Time/CNN poll also showed a vertiginous drop in support for US
military policy in Iraq (news - web sites).

The survey found that 41 percent of Americans somewhat or strongly
approve of current military policy, down from 59 percent in December
2003. According to the poll, 49 percent strongly or somewhat disapprove
of the military policy.

A minority of Americans -- 32 percent -- said Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld should resign as a result of his handling of Iraq. The poll
showed that 57 percent of Americans do not think he should step down.

The survey was taken amid the ongoing Iraqi prison scandal.

Two-thirds of Americans approve of courts martial for the US soldiers
who participated in the abuse of Iraqi prisoners and 68 percent said
higher-ranking military officers supervising prisons where abuse took
place should face military justice.

Only 45 percent said US generals in charge of operations in Iraq should
face the courts.