US campaign's negative tone takes early toll

1.00pm

WASHINGTON - The early campaign skirmishes between US President George W Bush and Democratic challenger John Kerry have taken a toll on public attitudes toward both men, pollsters say, with many voters already growing weary of the race's negative tone.

Kerry, the target of weeks of Bush attack ads in key battleground states, has been hit the hardest. He has suffered a slight dip in his personal ratings and fallen behind or into a dead heat with Bush in most national surveys after holding small leads earlier in the month.

However, some polls also show Bush's approval ratings softening, even before he was hit last week with the controversy over former counter-terrorism chief Richard Clarke's allegations that Bush neglected the terror threat before the September 11, 2001, attacks.

"There is evidence the vote on both sides is less certain and a little softer than it was two weeks ago, and that's the classic result of two candidates attacking each other," pollster Thomas Riehle of Ipsos Public Affairs said.

"People say 'oh, that's a bad fight,' and they back away from it."

Polls show voters are paying close attention to the campaign more than seven months before the election, with more than two-thirds already making up their minds, and nearly half of Americans in a recent poll said the race was too negative, with more blaming Kerry than Bush.

"The country is still very polarised and the undecided vote is a sliver of a sliver," Republican consultant Scott Reed said.

Bush has aired more than US$15 million ($23.45 million) in ads in March attacking Kerry as a waffler intent on raising taxes and cutting defence budgets. Kerry, a four-term US senator from Massachusetts, has questioned Bush's credibility and slammed his economic policies.

Kerry wrapped up the nomination with a string of primary wins on March 2 and has seen his negative ratings climb since. He has grappled with fallout from his comments that foreign leaders were backing his candidacy and his Republican opponents were a "crooked, lying" group.

The Democratic consulting firm Democracy Corps found Kerry's negative reactions from voters jumped 10 percentage points in the last few weeks to pull about even with his positive assessments.

"His negatives are going up, there is no question," Karlyn Bowman, a poll analyst at the American Enterprise Institute, said.

However, she said Kerry has unified the party earlier than in recent elections, scoring significantly higher ratings among Democrats at this stage of the race than former President Bill Clinton did in his first campaign in 1992.

Bush shows signs of damage as well. An Ipsos poll last week found the number of voters considered "strong" Kerry supporters down 4 percentage points to 24 per cent, while Bush's "strong" support fell 9 points from 37 per cent to 28 per cent.

A Fox News poll found Kerry's favourable ratings dropping 4 per cent in the last three weeks, but Bush's dipped by 2 per cent at the same time.

"Voters who are undecided right now are really alienated from both candidates," Riehle said.

Most recent polls were taken before the Clarke controversy, but a Newsweek poll conducted after he appeared before a 9/11 panel last week found approval of Bush's handling of homeland security dropped 11 percentage points from two months ago.

Bush's overall approval rating remained steady at 49 per cent after the Clarke flap, however, and he stayed in a virtual tie with Kerry.

Voters point to the economy and jobs as their No 1 concern but are evaluating Bush and Kerry on other issues including security concerns and trustworthiness, said Andrew Kohut, director of the independent Pew Research Centre for the People and the Press.

"It's both protection and prosperity," Kohut said.

- REUTERS