Rural areas give Missouri to Bush

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- President Bush won a repeat Missouri victory on Tuesday, rolling up waves of votes in rural areas and besting Democrat John Kerry in Missouri's booming suburbs.

The Associated Press based Bush's win on actual results and analysis of an exit poll of Missouri voters.

With 23 percent of 3,943 precincts reporting, Republican Bush built a lead of 462,861 votes, 52 percent, to 421,612 votes, 47 percent, for Kerry, the Massachusetts senator.

The lead bobbed back and forth in early returns, with Bush turning in a repeat of his 2000 performance in rural counties against Democrat Al Gore, who he beat that year in the state by 3.3 percentage points.

But Kerry was potent as expected in the cities of St. Louis and Kansas City, both Democratic strongholds. And in the most populous prize, St. Louis County, Kerry was leading; Gore also carried the county in 2000.

Still unresolved was whether Missouri's outcome would match the nation's, preserving the Show-Me State's status as a White House bellwether.

Missourians who cited terrorism and moral values backed Bush by a 4-1 margin, an analysis of exit polling conducted for The Associated Press suggested.

"I didn't think we should change presidents in the middle of a war," said Naomi Collier, 69, a homemaker voting a straight Republican ticket in Springfield.

The statistical analysis of the Missouri vote came from voter interviews conducted for the AP by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International.

Missouri voters who listed the economy/jobs and Iraq as the issues that mattered most favored Kerry by a 4-1 margin in the exit poll.

Judy Juergens, a 56-year-old business consultant from Weston, said she voted for Kerry because she was "terrified" of a second Bush term: "I'm worried about what he's doing to us."

Neither candidate visited the state in recent days, reflecting Missouri's relegation to a second-tier battleground state. Media polls had Bush ahead by a few percentage points, but within their margin of error.