Largely due to the attacks on Democrat presidential nominee John Kerry's war record, US President George W. Bush has edged ahead of Kerry slightly for the first time, according to a Los Angeles Times poll published Thursday.  

The poll found that Bush led Kerry by 49 percent to 46 percent among registered voters. In the previous Times poll taken just before the Democratic convention last month, Kerry held a 2-percentage-point advantage over Bush.

That small shift from July was within the poll's margin of error, but it fits with other findings showing the electorate edging toward Bush over the past month on a broad range of measures, from support for his handling of Iraq to confidence in his leadership and honesty.

Although a majority of Americans say they believe Kerry served honorably in Vietnam, the poll showed that the attacks on Kerry by a group of Vietnam veterans criticizing his performance in combat and his antiwar protests at home have some adverse effect on Kerry, the Times reported.

The poll showed that the percentage of respondents who believe Kerry had demonstrated the "qualities America needs in a president" has declined to 48 percent from 53 percent in July, while those who criticized Kerry for demonstrating poor judgment increased from 32 percent in July to 37 percent.

The Times Poll interviewed 1,597 adults, including 1,352 registered voters nationwide, from Saturday through Tuesday. It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

With independent voters splitting evenly in the survey between the two presidential candidates, one key to Bush's tentative new advantage was his greater success at consolidating his base.

The poll showed that 3 percent of self-claimed Republican voters said they would vote for Kerry, while Bush drew 15 percent of all Democrats, and 20 percent of Democrats who consider themselves moderate or conservative.

Bush's advantage remained 3 percentage points when independent candidate Ralph Nader was added to the race. In a three-way race, Bush drew 47 percent, compared with 44 percent for Kerry and 3 percent for Nader, whose access to the ballot in many key states remains uncertain.

For all the promising signs for Bush, the poll found he is still threatened by a current of uneasiness about the nation's direction. In the survey, a slight majority of voters said they believed the country was on the wrong track.

Meanwhile, a majority also said the country was not better off because of his policies and needed to set a new course. And 45 percent said they believed his policies had hurt rather than helped the economy.

Those results suggested that a substantial part of the electorate remained open to change.

(Xinhua News Agency August 27, 2004)