Voters cool to Bush, but challengers falter

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Poll after poll shows dissatisfaction with President Bush and an "enthusiasm gap" working against Republicans heading into next year's elections, yet the top Republican presidential candidates are running even with or ahead of the top Democrats in head-to-head matchups.

"A major cautionary note for the Democrats at this point in the election cycle is the disparity between Americans' partisan preferences for the next president in the abstract and their preferences between specific candidates being offered up to the voters," the Gallup Poll said in a analysis.

In a Quinnipiac University Poll released last week, former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani leads Democratic Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton in the three swing states of Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania. The same poll shows that Sen. John McCain, Arizona Republican, leads Mrs. Clinton in Ohio and Pennsylvania and is tied with her in Florida, and he splits with Mr. Obama, leading in Ohio, trailing in Pennsylvania and tied in Florida.

In Gallup's national poll, Mr. Giuliani and Mrs. Clinton are virtually tied -- and other polls have shown similar results.

However, polls asking voters whether they prefer a generic Republican or generic Democrat for president give the Democrats a strong advantage. A Bloomberg-Los Angeles Times poll taken April 5 to 9 found 49 percent of registered voters wanted the Democratic Party to win the White House, 10 percentage points more than favored Republicans.

"It is an apparent contradiction. The explanation lies in the difference between the approval and disapproval of one president versus a comparison of two different candidates," Republican pollster Whit Ayres said.

"A lot of people who disapprove of both the war in Iraq and President Bush's handling of it do not necessarily want Hillary or a Democrat as president. That is particularly true of independents who voted overwhelmingly for Democrats for Congress in the 2006 election, but they split fairly evenly when the choice is Rudy or Hillary," he said.

Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, said it proves that the candidates matter.

"It tends to be a situation where the presidential nominee is more important than anything else, and that would override to some degree any party inclinations," he said. "George Bush is not on the ballot in 2008, so the animus a lot of Americans feel toward George Bush may or may not be translated to the Republican nominee."

He said much will depend on whether Democrats can successfully tie the top Republicans to Mr. Bush.