Kerry leads Bush 50% to 44% in nationwide poll

Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry leads incumbent President Bush by six percentage points in a nationwide poll of registered voters conducted over the past three days, according to the American Research Group.

Kerry, a four-term U.S. senator from Massachusetts, led Bush 50 percent to 44 percent in the latest monthly poll by the group, compared with a 50 percent to 43 percent lead last month. The remaining voters said they were undecided.

When Ralph Nader, 70, is added to the ballot, 48 percent of respondents said they would vote for Kerry, 43 percent said they would vote for Bush, and 2 percent chose Nader. This is unchanged from March, the polling firm said.

The poll is based on 770 telephone interviews conducted April 6 to April 8 and has a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points, the polling firm based in Manchester, N.H., said on its Web site.

The gap between Bush, 57, and Kerry, 60, was narrower in past surveys by the firm, which has been polling consumers since 1985. In a Feb. 17-19 survey, Kerry led Bush 48 percent to 46 percent, with 6 percent undecided. In January, Kerry led 47 percent to 46 percent. Both were statistical ties.

A boost in the number of jobs created by the U.S. economy buoyed Americans' perceptions of how Bush is handling the economy, a second survey by American Research showed. The economy added 308,000 jobs last month, the biggest jump in almost four years, the Labor Department said a week ago.

In this poll, 50 percent of adults said they disapproved of the way Bush is doing his job, his highest disapproval rating in at least a year. In April 2003 Bush's disapproval rating was 24 percent, the group said.

The poll of 1,100 adult Americans conducted April 6 to April 8 found that 40 percent of those surveyed said they approved of the way Bush was handling the economy; 54 percent disapproved. That represents a swing of two percentage points in Bush's favor from a month earlier, the polling firm said.