CAMPAIGN ’88 : Dukakis Leads in Polls

Dukakis retained his double-digit lead over Vice President George Bush in a national survey conducted this week by the Washington Post-ABC News Poll.

The poll of 1,172 randomly selected registered voters put Dukakis, the likely Democratic nominee, ahead of Bush, who has clinched the Republican nomination, by 53% to 40%. The poll found, however, that nearly half of each candidate’s support is soft and could easily shift in coming months. The poll’s margin of error was three percentage points.

National polls conducted earlier in the month by the Gallup Organization and CBS News produced similar results.

Poll analysts attributed Dukakis’ lead to voters’ negative views of Bush and declining confidence in the future of the economy and the country.

Almost three of every five Dukakis supporters surveyed said they planned to vote for him largely because they do not want Bush to be President, not because they liked Dukakis. About two in every five Bush partisans polled said they would vote against Dukakis.