Bush couldn't beat Gore or Kerry, poll finds

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-bush13.html

President Bush has become so unpopular in recent months that he'd have a hard time beating Al Gore or John Kerry if he had to face his former Democratic rivals again this year, according to a Scripps Howard/ Ohio University poll.

And the president would be thrashed if he had to run against his own father, George Herbert Walker Bush, losing by more than a 3-1 ratio in a theoretical matchup.

In addition, an Associate Press-Ipsos poll published Friday showed Bush's job- approval rating declined to 33 percent, matching a record low. The survey of 1,001 adults was taken Aug. 7-9, before Thursday's announcement by British authorities that they had foiled a suspected terrorist plot to blow up U.S.-bound planes. In the past, imminent threats of attacks have helped Bush's public support.

The Scripps poll shows that the 2000 and 2004 elections are among a very few presidential races that Americans would change, according to interviews with 1,010 U.S. adults last month. The poll asked people how they would vote ''knowing what you know now'' in every recent presidential race starting with 1960.

[Kutjara]

1. He didn't beat them the first time either. n/t

[CJCRANE]

2. Bush didn't beat Gore or Kerry, reality finds

[JI7]

3. "again"

[ikri]

4. Right now

He'd probably have a lot of trouble beating Dukakis too

[Cassandra]

5. But did they poll Diebold?

The only vote that "counts".

[ThomWV]

6. The Kennedy Results Are Interesting

The thing that interested me about the Kennedy result was that its not likely that the people polled could have voted for or against him in the first place, so its sort of silly to see if they might have changed their minds by now.

Remember, to have voted for Kennedy you'd have to be over 65 years old today. So how can you ask a 50-year-old if they would have changed their vote?

The same thing is probably true about Reagan. The age of the population being what it seems to me to be likely more people were polled that were not old enough to vote for either of those two men at the time of the election. They never cast the first ballot.

So what you're seeing isn't a change of mind in some cases, just what some young person's opinion is now about something they undoubtedly paid no attention to then.

[bowens43]

7. Too bad Bush could and did beat them when it counted.

Which is why neither of them should be considered in 2008.