Survey Limited to Those Who Plan to Attend Caucuses : Bush, Dole Virtually Even in Iowa Poll

DES MOINES — Presidential candidates George Bush and Bob Dole turned up virtually dead even in a keenly awaited benchmark poll of Iowa Republicans published Sunday.

The Des Moines Register sampling of Republicans most likely to vote in next year’s Iowa caucuses found Vice President Bush favored by 29% and Senate GOP leader Dole by 32%. Because the poll has a 6% margin of error, the results must be viewed as a statistical tie.

It was the first time that the newspaper has tried to narrow its poll to just those 20% or so of Iowa’s registered Republicans who will go to the party’s presidential preference caucuses on Feb. 8--one of the important early tests of the 1988 presidential election.

Other Candidates in Tie

Behind Bush and Dole, all of the other candidates were bunched in a statistical tie. New York Rep. Jack Kemp was favored by 10%, evangelist Pat Robertson by 7%, former Delaware Gov. Pierre S. (Pete) du Pont IV by 5% and former Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig Jr. by 4%. This left 12% undecided.

In the elongated Iowa delegate selection process, reliable measures of a candidate’s progress are painfully far apart. The influential Register, for instance, has not published a poll on the Republican presidential race for five months, although candidates have spent an enormous amount of their time and energy here. Those factors made Sunday’s poll eagerly awaited.

The previous Register poll cannot be directly compared to this latest sampling because it measured the preferences of GOP voters in general, not just those describing themselves as likely caucus goers.

The earlier poll had Bush in the lead at 40%, followed by Dole at 33% and Kemp at 7%.

Small Town Favorite

The latest survey found that Bush, an Ivy Leaguer, was the favorite of Republicans in small towns, while Dole, a native of adjacent Kansas, was leading not only among farmers but among residents of Iowa’s largest cities.

One large question mark in the developing campaign is the influence of fundamentalist Christians. In the last couple of years, they have shown themselves to be a powerful, potentially decisive political force in Republican politics in Iowa when an issue moves them.

The Register survey, however, found that Bush and Dole evenly split half of the fundamentalist vote, with Robertson backed by 19%.

Last week, the newspaper published results of its survey of the Democratic candidates, showing a tightly bunched field without a statistically valid front-runner. Missouri Rep. Richard A. Gephardt was favored by 18%, Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis by 14%, Illinois Sen. Paul Simon by 13%, Delaware Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. by 10%, civil rights leader Jesse Jackson by 10%, former Arizona Gov. Bruce Babbitt by 9% and Tennessee Sen. Albert Gore Jr. by 2%. Eighteen percent were undecided, and undeclared contender Rep. Patricia Schroeder of Colorado was supported by 6%.