Poll Finds Rising Support for a Independent Race : Elections: As Clinton’s ratings slip, a presidential candidate such as Colin Powell or even Bill Bradley finds more favor, a Times Mirror survey shows.

Public support for a third-party candidate in the 1996 presidential race has been rising steadily as President Clinton’s approval rating continues to decline, according to a poll released today.

The survey by The Times Mirror Center for The People & The Press found that 26% of those interviewed say they would like to see an independent candidate elected President, compared to 35% favoring an unnamed Republican candidate and 32% favoring Clinton’s reelection.

The nationwide poll of 1,476 respondents conducted last weekend showed retired Army Gen. Colin L. Powell rated highest among possible independent candidates, with a 62% favorable rating and 17% unfavorable. But even Powell’s rating showed some slippage. The hero of the Persian Gulf War, who has not declared his intentions, had received a 67% favorable response in a similar survey last February.

The new poll found that Sen. Bill Bradley (D-N.J.), who after announcing last week he would not seek reelection to his Senate seat left open the option of an independent presidential candidacy, has a 33% favorable, 19% unfavorable rating. But he is known to only about half the electorate.

The Times Mirror poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points. Times Mirror Co. is the owner of the Los Angeles Times and other newspaper, broadcasting and publishing enterprises.

Clinton’s approval rating in the past two months slipped from 50% to 44%. The response to a Ross Perot candidacy, meanwhile, was only 40% favorable and 53% unfavorable--demonstrating that his recent United We Stand, America, Inc. political convention in Dallas had done little to help him.

“It’s not just the President who is in trouble with the American public,” according to Andrew Kohut, the survey director. Virtually every other political figure tested in the survey “has either a very negative or increasingly unfavorable rating,” he said.

For example, the poll showed that negative ratings for House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) have increased the most--from 37% negative in February to 54% currently. These results paralleled growing opposition to Republican policies in Congress.

According to the latest survey, the public disapproves of GOP actions in Congress by a wider margin (45% to 38% approval) than in mid-June, when disapproval outweighed approval by 45% to 41%.

Kohut said the steady growth in potential support for independent candidates seems closely linked to increasing discontent with Republican policies and to a public perception that the Clinton Administration is “gridlocked.”

“Fully 63% of those who disapprove of both Clinton and the GOP leaders favor an independent candidate in 1996,” he said. Among persons who describe themselves as political independents, 44% said they would cast their ballot for a third-party candidate, while 25% said they would support Clinton and 23% a Republican challenger, Kohut reported.

The survey found supporters of an independent candidate in 1996 to be slightly less conservative than those who voted for Perot in 1992.

The Texas billionaire’s supporters came more from the ranks of the GOP, while the new third-force voters more often have a Democratic pedigree, Kohut said. Nearly half, he said, are Democrats of two sorts: 27% are self-described and 21% are independents who say they lean to the Democrats. They are younger, poorer and more likely to be women than were Perot voters.