Dean surges to top of Pa. poll

Presidential hopeful Howard Dean is pulling ahead of the Democratic pack among Pennsylvania voters and is the only candidate to keep President Bush’s support under 50 percent, according to a poll released Wednesday.

The Quinnipiac University poll shows Dean, the former Vermont governor, holding a double-digit lead in the Keystone State, the nation’s fifth-largest electoral prize. Dean nabbed 28 percent of the 1,092 registered voters surveyed. Undecided accounted for 18 percent of the vote — more than those supporting any other candidate.

Seventeen percent supported Sen. Joe Lieberman, Rep. Dick Gephardt pulled 10 percent, Wesley Clark collected 9 percent, and Sen. John Kerry had 7 percent, the poll showed.

Two months ago, Dean held a mere 5 percent of support among state voters.

Bush leads Dean 49-43
Bush led Dean by a margin of 49-43 percent. The president scored 50 percent against Lieberman, Kerry and Clark, and 51 percent against Gephardt, the poll shows.

A slim majority of Pennsylvania voters is upset with the president for rolling back steep tariffs on steel imports more than a year before they were set to expire. The tariffs endeared the Republican president to politically key Rust Belt states, including Pennsylvania, where steelmaking remains a dominant industry. Bush scrapped the tariffs in the face of a $2.2 billion trade war threatened by the European Union.

Fifty-two percent of voters said they disapproved of the tariff removal, while 36 percent approved. Moreover, 18 percent of voters surveyed said the move makes them less inclined to support Bush’s re-election.

The survey was conducted Dec. 11-14 and has a sampling error margin of plus or minus 3 percentage points.