The full poll data can be seen here (Adobe Acrobat Reader required).

The poll has Bush leading 49-40-4 in a three-way race, leading 47-36-3 among those with their minds made up. If you look at the percentage of votes up for grabs that Kerry would have to win, that's a difficulty-4 14er he's looking at. Kerry's not a mountain-climber. He's a snowboarder, and not a great one, at that.

The other interesting questions are the "Who's better on issue X?," and Bush leads all of those, including the economy and jobs, except for "affordable health care." If someone would make economics education mandatory in our public schools, he'd be ahead on that one, too.

A couple of notes. The Republican-Democrat breakdown is listed as 39-30, which would seem to overstate the Republican registration advantage by a couple of points, but not necessarily the voter turnout advantage. The article, which purports to show that Colorado may really be a battleground state, points out that Kerry needs to have significant cross-over appeal, or overwhelming appeal among independents. They claim that Kerry might try to sweep Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, and Colorado by picking Hispanic Bill Richardson. But if you add up all those electoral votes, you still don't get to Pennsylvania, which Bush lost in 2000 and now leads.

On an "all politics is local" note, the poll lists historical tracking number for the most important issue. Sometime between January 2002 and September 2003, the electorate completely flipped between "Growth" (as a negative) and "the economy/recession." In January 2002, by 52% - 13% people were more worried about growth. By September 2003, the result we reversed, 36% - 18%. Funny what a recession will do to make people appreciate growth. Personally, I'd just like to see the city hire more traffic engineers.