 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
| |||||
|
||||||
 |
New N.H. poll finds McCain advancing
At a GOP debate tonight in Manchester - the first joint appearance that Bush has agreed to - the six Republican presidential candidates will be given equal time. But the poll shows that likely primary voters have turned the contest into a two-man battle.
With two months until the New Hampshire primary, Bush, the governor of Texas, is the favorite of 45 percent of the likely primary voters, according to the poll, while McCain, an Arizona senator, is now favored by 31 percent. The four other candidates combined would share just 11 percent of the vote.
Two of them, Senator Orrin G. Hatch of Utah and Gary Bauer, a former Reagan aide, drew the combined support of just five of the 400 likely voters, who were polled on Monday and Tuesday evenings.
The publisher Steve Forbes and Alan Keyes each drew the support of 5 percent of the likely primary voters. Eleven percent of the Republicans and Independents who said they plan to vote in the GOP primary remain undecided.
The poll, conducted for the Globe and WBZ-TV by KRC Communications Research, has a potential margin of error of plus or minus five percentage points.
For McCain, the poll found dramatic improvement from a Globe/WBZ-TV poll taken at the end of August. For Bush, support has remained static. In the August survey, Bush was the choice of 44 percent and McCain of 12 percent. Since then, however, McCain has surged. He also appeared to have benefited from Elizabeth Dole's and former Vice President Dan Quayle's decisions to end their campaigns, and from Patrick J. Buchanan's move to drop out of the GOP field to seek the Reform Party nomination.
Data in the poll suggest opportunities, and potential barriers, for both Bush and McCain. Both are extraordinarily popular with GOP voters; voters who like them far outnumber those who don't, by almost 6 to 1 for Bush and more than 7 to 1 for McCain.
The reservoir of good will for Bush suggests that McCain will find it difficult to overtake him unless the two-term governor stumbles over the next nine weeks, according to the pollster, Gerry Chervinsky.
Still, the survey also shows that the more voters know about the contest and the two candidates, the better McCain fares. For example, among voters who said they were paying a lot of attention to the race, Bush's lead over McCain dropped slightly. And among the voters who could, without prompting, name both McCain and Bush as candidates, Bush's lead was shaved to six percentage points.
Even so, Chervinsky said, Bush has held the allegiance of almost half of likely primary voters, in a period in which questions have increased about whether the son of a former president, who lacks national experience, is qualified to move into the Oval Office.
According to the poll, that concern remains prominent in the minds of voters.
Asked, for instance, how confident they are that Bush ''has the background and experience necessary to be president,'' just 31 percent said they were ''very confident'' that he does. Forty-seven percent said they were ''somewhat confident,'' and 16 percent said they were ''not very confident at all.''
Barely half the likely voters, 53 percent, said they were satisfied that Bush ''has a deep enough grasp of foreign policy to serve effectively as president.'' But 31 percent said they were not satisfied, and 14 percent said they did not know.
On the same question, McCain, who has emerged as one of his party's more respected voices on foreign affairs, held a clear advantage over Bush. Sixty-two percent of the voters responding - and more than half of Bush's supporters - said they were satisfied with McCain's grasp of foreign policy issues, while just 10 percent said they were not. For McCain, who is less well-known to voters than Bush, 26 percent said they did not know.
On two other issues, the poll offered some hope for McCain: Voters seemed to like his comparatively unscripted public style. Asked to identify the candidate who says what he believes, and not what his campaign wants the voters to hear, 41 percent picked the Arizonan, while 26 percent named Bush.
On an issue that has bedeviled McCain in the last month - the accusation that he has a habit of losing his temper - the voters don't seem to care much. When those who said they were aware of such reports were asked how it would affect their decision, 14 percent said it would make them less likely to vote for McCain. Four percent said the issue would make them more likely to support him. But 80 percent said the issue would have no impact.
McCain, the polltaker Chervinsky said, ''has clearly gained considerable ground'' on Bush, who was once thought to be the prohibitive favorite to win the nomination. But given Bush's continued popularity, Chervinsky said, McCain will not overtake Bush easily.
Still, pointing to the undecided vote, and to the concerns about Bush's depth, Chervinsky added: ''It remains important for Bush to give the voters a sense that he has the knowledge and grasp it takes to be president.''
|
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
eorge W. Bush retains a respectable lead among likely Republican presidential primary voters in New Hampshire, according to a new Boston Globe/WBZ-TV poll, but John McCain has gained considerable ground with an electorate that is not fully satisfied that Bush has the depth to be president.
