Missourians split on Kerry, Bush
Missouri, considered the best presidential bellwether state in the nation, is torn between Sen. John Kerry and President Bush, a new poll shows.
With just more than three months to go before the November election, the statewide survey found Kerry leading Bush 46 percent to 44 percent. But the poll's 4-point margin of error suggests the race remains a virtual tie.
Conducted for The Kansas City Star and KMBC-TV by Market Research Institute of Mission, the poll found that just 1 percent of respondents favored third-party contender Ralph Nader. Nine percent were undecided.
Conducted July 13 through Tuesday, the poll surveyed 600 Missourians. Asked their party affiliations, 36 percent said they were Democrats, 32 percent said they were Republicans while 28 percent identified themselves as independents.
Of the remaining 4 percent, half said they were affiliated with another party while the remaining 2 percent said they didn't know their party affiliation.
The survey might slightly under-represent the number of Republicans, considering the party affiliations of those who voted in the 2000 presidential election. An MSNBC exit poll of Missouri that year determined that 39 percent of the state's voters were Democrats, 38 percent were Republican and 23 percent were independent.
Poll respondents named different reasons for backing Bush and Kerry. Gary Cramer, a retired truck driver from Cabool, Mo., said the senator from Massachusetts was the lesser of two evils.
"I'm coming down anti-Bush," he said. "I don't like Bush's economic policies. In fact, I don't like any of his policies at all. I don't like the way he's handling the war in Iraq or any of it."
Bill Ainsworth, a disabled veteran from St. Louis, said the war with Iraq had pushed him toward Kerry.
"I'm tired of going nowhere except the war," Ainsworth said. "We should be making friends in the world, not enemies. It seems like a lot of lives could have been saved and a lot of good could've been done with the money."