Poll Finds Bush in Dead Heat if Vote Were Today

President Bush, continuing a steep slide from the heights in public opinion polls, would find himself in a dead heat if he were running for reelection today against an unnamed Democratic candidate, according to a new nationwide poll released Monday.

However, in a race against Gov. Mario M. Cuomo of New York, the Democrat most preferred by members of his own party, Bush still wins handily. Nonetheless, the new poll results reflect a significant erosion of the President’s standing among voters--apparently as a result of growing concern over his handling of the nation’s troubled economy.

The survey, conducted by the Times Mirror Center for People and the Press, tested Bush against “the Democratic candidate”--whoever it turns out to be--and also against Cuomo.

The poll showed 43% of the respondents favoring “the Democratic candidate” and 41% supporting Bush. An unnamed candidate will usually do better than actual candidates of the same party in such polls because the unnamed candidate has no negative attributes.

This is the first time since his election in 1988 that the President has failed to beat an unnamed Democratic candidate in a trial heat by double-digit margins.

In the immediate aftermath of the Persian Gulf War earlier this year, he was favored to win over “the Democratic candidate” by a whopping 50 percentage points. As recently as a month ago, a Times Mirror poll found Bush favored for reelection against the opposition standard-bearer by 55% to 37%.

The current survey is the latest in a series that has encouraged Democratic leaders, who once despaired of beating Bush. The new findings detailed Americans’ increasing concern about domestic issues, especially unemployment and other economic problems. And they showed that voters give exceptionally low priority to foreign affairs issues, which have dominated the Bush presidency.

“This is the first time that Bush’s reelection prospects appear directly threatened by the public’s mounting unease at the country’s economic prospects and the order of the Bush Administration’s priorities,” said Donald S. Kellerman, director of the Times Mirror Center.

Only 34% of those polled said that they were “satisfied with the way things are going” in the country today, the lowest “state of the nation” reading since Times Mirror began recording it in 1986. At the height of Bush’s race with Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis in October, 1988, public satisfaction with the way things were going stood at 56%.

The changes appear to reflect voter disenchantment with the present state of the economy and with Bush rather than an active increase in enthusiasm for Democratic candidates. Despite faring no better than even in a face-off with an unnamed candidate, the President would be heavily favored--58% to 37%--over Cuomo.

Among Democrats polled, Cuomo was preferred as the party candidate by 30%. Former Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr. of California placed second with 18%, followed by the other announced candidates: Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, 9%; Gov. L. Douglas Wilder of Virginia, 8%; Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa, 6%; Sen. Bob Kerrey of Nebraska, 5%, and ex-Massachusetts Sen. Paul E. Tsongas, 4%.

The poll indicated that, if Cuomo does decide to run, he will have a solid opportunity to expand on an exceptionally high favorability rating. Among respondents who knew enough about him to have an opinion, 70% gave him a favorable rating. Thirty percent did not know enough about him to have an opinion.

Cuomo, in a telephone interview Monday, said that he will “try to accommodate” Democratic Party Chairman Ron Brown, who has urged him to announce his decision on whether he will run as quickly as possible so that voters can concentrate on a fixed field of Democratic candidates.

He has already done his “homework” on running in Democratic primaries and is now carefully studying the financial situations facing his state government and New York City, he said.

The Times-Mirror survey was based on telephone interviews conducted among a nationally representative sample of 2,020 adults, 18 years of age or older, from Oct. 31 to Nov. 10. The margin of sampling error in the poll is plus or minus 2 percentage points.

For questions measuring preferences for the presidential election, the sample was divided into two random halves, with 1,010 respondents asked to choose between Bush and an unnamed Democrat while the other respondents chose between Bush and Cuomo. The sampling error in these categories is plus or minus 3 percentage points.

The results of the Democratic nomination question, which was based on 868 interviews with Democrats and independents who said they leaned to the Democratic Party, have a sampling error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

In the overall survey, the President’s job approval rating dropped six points in a month--to 55%, still relatively high by historic standards. At this point in their first terms, Gallup polls found a 53% positive job score for Ronald Reagan, 38% for Jimmy Carter, 41% for Gerald R. Ford and 50% for Richard M. Nixon.

But Bush’s rating has steadily declined since March of this year, when it peaked at 84% in the aftermath of the Gulf War.

One of the poll’s most significant findings for the 1992 presidential campaign is that, as the country’s economic problems have mounted, Americans have turned almost totally inward in their concerns. Not one foreign policy issue was cited by more than 5% as a top priority for the presidential agenda.

Only 5% gave highest priority to preventing Iraq from gaining access to nuclear weapons, 4% gave highest priority to achieving a lasting piece in the Middle East and only 2% gave it to helping the Soviets convert to a market economy.

The poll essentially reaffirmed a Times Mirror survey of a month ago that showed that, by a staggering margin of 83% to 15%, Americans want presidential candidates to concentrate on domestic issues, not foreign affairs.

The Times Mirror poll showed significant generational differences in Bush’s support, as well as a clear division among economic classes, when he is compared to an unnamed Democratic candidate. Among voters under 30 years of age, he would beat the Democrat, 44% to 42%; but, among voters over 50 years old, he would lose to the Democrat, 45% to 38%--an especially worrisome finding for the White House, because older voters usually turn out in greater numbers than younger ones.

Bush would be favored, 53% to 38%, among Americans earning $50,000 a year or more, but a Democrat would beat him, 45% to 38%, among Americans earning less than $50,000 a year.

How the Public Rates the President

Q. Do you approve or disapprove of the way George Bush is handling his job as President?

Nov. Oct. July May March Jan. 25 Jan. 3 ’91 ’91 ’91 ’91 ’91 ’91 ’91 Approve 55% 61 67 77 84 79 59 Disapprove 33% 28 23 16 10 14 24 Don’t know 12% 10 10 7 6 7 17 Total 100 100 100 100 100 100 100

Q. In general, are you satisfied or dissatisfied with the way things are going in the U.S. at this time?

Nov. May Jan. Oct. May Jan. ’91 ’90 ’89 ’88 ’88 ’88 Satisfied 34% 41 45 56 41 39 Dissatisfied 61% 54 50 40 54 55 Don’t know 5% 5 5 4 5 6 Total 100 100 100 100 100 100

Source: Times Mirror Center for the People and the Press