Those polled were not given independent Ralph Nader as a choice, but interviewers kept track of those who volunteered Nader's name, pollster Andrew Smith said. He said only one of the 484 people who answered the question chose Nader. "I think there's a sour taste in the mouths of a lot of Naderites up here," Smith said.
Nader's 22,198 votes in New Hampshire in 2000 was nearly three times Bush's victory margin over Democrat Al Gore.
But exit polls conducted by the Associated Press and the television networks suggested that Bush would have won New Hampshire even if Nader had not been on the ballot. Some Nader voters said they would have stayed home, and Gore's margin over Bush among the rest probably would not have put him over the top.
In yesterday's poll, Nader's lone vote was part of the 2 percent who chose "other" in a Kerry-Bush race. Four percent were undecided. More people viewed both Bush and Kerry favorably than unfavorably, but it was close. The numbers were 48 percent to 46 percent for Bush, 46 percent to 41 percent for Kerry.
The telephone poll of likely voters was conducted April 19-26, before the furor over alleged abuses of Iraqi prisoners by US personnel.
