| Survey of 1,000 Likely Voters January 28-29, 2004 | Bush vs. Kerry: First Impressions | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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January 30,
2004--Massachusetts Senator John Kerry solidified his status as the
Democrats' front-runner with a solid victory in New Hampshire last Tuesday.
By Friday, he had taken a one-point lead over President George W. Bush in
the Rasmussen Reports Presidential Tracking Poll. Here's a snapshot of how the voting public sizes up these candidates very early in the campaign season. * The public is evenly divided as to which candidate they trust more on economic matters. Forty-four percent (44%) prefer Kerry while 43% prefer Bush. Typically, public perception of the President's economic policies moves up and down with the economy itself. The economic confidence of Investors and Consumers has been declining in recent weeks. * Fifty-one percent (51%) say they trust the President more than Senator Kerry on national defense issues and the War on Terror. Just 37% prefer the Senator on these issues. * Forty-eight percent (48%) of voters see the President as politically conservative. Thirty-three percent (33%) see Bush as a moderate. While two-thirds of liberal voters see Bush as conservative, conservative voters are divided. Less than half (46%) of all conservatives see the President as one of them, while 38% say he is a moderate. * Thirty-nine percent (39%) of all voters see John Kerry as a moderate while 37% say he is politically liberal. Liberal voters see Kerry as a moderate (59% of self-identified liberals have this view). Only 22% of liberal voters see Kerry as politically liberal. * Liberal voters are somewhat more united in opposition to George W. Bush than conservatives are in support of the President. Bush carries just 65% of conservative voters at this time while Kerry attract 73% of liberal voters. * Kerry leads 55% to 34% among government employees while Bush leads 50% to 39% among those who work in the private sector. * If George W. Bush is elected, 34% of all voters expect their taxes to go up while only 15% expect their taxes to decline. Fifty-six percent (56%) of Kerry voters expect their taxes to go up with a Bush victory. * If John Kerry is elected, 44% say their taxes will go up while 13% say they will decline. * Regardless of who they want to win, 55% of all voters believe George W. Bush will be re-elected. Thirty percent (30%) believe Kerry will win, while 14% are not sure. The national telephone survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted by Rasmussen Reports January 28 and 29, 2004. The margin of sampling error for the survey is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. (see Methodology) |
Democratic Party Primary Preferences
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