Kerry more favored than Bush: Poll

US Democratic candidate John Kerry is more favored than President George W. Bush among likely voters when other presidential candidates are factored into the 2004 presidential race, a poll released on Sunday showed.

Forty-seven percent of likely voters favored Senator Kerry from Massachusetts, against 43 percent for Bush, when independent candidate Ralph Nader, and Libertarian, Constitution and Green Party presidential candidates were counted, according to the new Zogby America poll.

The Democratic presidential ticket of Kerry and North Carolina Senator John Edwards gained two percentage points since the Democratic national convention in late July over President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney and now led by seven percentage points with 50 percent to 43 percent.

Bush's overall job performance rating moved up three percentage points to 47 percent, with more than half of respondents continuing to express disapproval, the poll showed.

More respondents -- 51 percent -- said the country was headed on the wrong track, while 42 percent felt the United States was on the right track.

Nearly one in three, or 31 percent, of those polled continued to identify jobs and the economy as the top issue facing the country, followed by the war on terrorism (19 percent), the war in Iraq (14 percent), health care and education.

The poll surveyed 1,011 likely voters by telephone from Thursday to Saturday, and its overall results have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.