The Rasmussen Reports tracking poll has Kerry over Bush 47 percent to 45 percent. There's no Nader factor here, because Rasmussen doesn't consider Nader a factor, and explains why here.
Over the weekend, a Rasmussen survey found that Americans are less confident about the "war on terror" than they have been all year. Now, 47 percent say the U.S. and its allies are winning, down from 54 percent right after the Madrid bombings last month.
President Bush trails John Kerry in Minnesota, but is nearly even with him in Michigan, two polls in key battleground states show. In Minnesota, Kerry leads Bush 50 percent to 38 percent. Nader gets 2 percent. In Michigan, Bush and Kerry are in a statistical tie, with Kerry getting 44 percent, Bush 43 and Nader 3 percent. Al Gore narrowly won both Minnesota and Michigan in 2000.
The American Research Group has some new state polling data: In New Mexico, Bush and Kerry are statistically tied with 46 and 45 percent, and Nader gets 3 percent. Without Nader on the ballot, Bush and Kerry are tied at 47 percent. In New Hampshire, Bush leads Kerry 48 to 43 percent. Nader gets 2 percent -- down from 8 percent in the ARG's March poll. In a two-way race, Bush leads Kerry 48 percent to 45 percent, with 7 percent undecided.
A Columbus Dispatch survey via Political Wire shows Bush leading Kerry in Ohio, but within the margin of error -- 46 percent to 45 percent.
In Colorado, a state Bush won in 2000, the president leads Kerry by 9 points in one new poll. But the Rocky Mountain News says Colorado Democrats still believe Bush is "ripe for an upset" in their state. "Some of the nation's most respected pundits say the race here could be close, based in part on two other recent polls that show Kerry and Bush statistically tied in Colorado. Charlie Cook, who edits the Cook Political Report in Washington, D.C., says Colorado could be in 2004 what Florida was in 2000: a once-Republican lock that goes up for grabs faster than expected. 'Like most people, I was sort of blowing off Colorado as a battleground state,' he said. But the recent polls 'knocked my socks off.'"
A new Zogby poll shows that Kerry leads Bush among Hispanic voters nationwide, 58 percent to 33 percent. The AP writes: "Despite the advantage, strategists say Kerry must hold Bush's support among Hispanic-Americans to less than 35 percent to have a shot of winning the White House in November. Bush narrowly won the presidency in part by taking a sliver of the traditionally Democratic Hispanic base and drawing 35 percent of its vote in 2000."
According to a Washington Post poll released over the weekend, "President Bush has shed a good part of the 'compassionate conservative' image he cultivated during the 2000 election The Post poll found Americans split over whether Bush has governed in a compassionate way, with 49 percent saying he has and 45 percent saying he has not. That is down sharply from February 2003, when a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll found that 64 percent of Americans thought he had governed compassionately."
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