June 23 (Bloomberg) -- Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry extended his lead to 6 percentage points over President George W. Bush in a New Jersey poll as more than half of those surveyed said going to war in Iraq was wrong.

Bush led Kerry by the same margin in a separate poll of voters in North Carolina, which like New Jersey has 15 of the 270 electoral votes a candidate needs for election. Bush and Kerry were tied for voter support in a survey of voters in West Virginia, one of the states both campaigns have targeted as a battleground for the November election.

In New Jersey, Kerry won support from 46 percent of the 1,167 registered voters surveyed June 15-20 by Quinnipiac University, compared with 40 percent for Bush and 7 percent for independent candidate Ralph Nader. A month ago, the poll found Kerry led with 46 percent to Bush's 43 percent and Nader's 5 percent. The survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.9 percentage points.

Kerry, 60, a four-term Massachusetts senator, and Bush, 57, were in a statistical tie when voters were asked who would do a better job handling the situation in Iraq. Forty-six percent chose Bush and 45 percent picked Kerry. A month ago, Bush led on that question by 4 percentage points.

``The Iraq war has grown unpopular in New Jersey, with 54 percent saying it was the wrong thing for the United States to do,'' Clay Richards, assistant director of the Hamden, Connecticut- based university's polling institute, said in a statement. ``Kerry is just holding ground as Bush fades.''

`Not as Strong'

Bush is doing better than in 2000, when he lost the state by 16 percentage points to former Vice President Al Gore, the Democratic candidate. ``Kerry is still not as strong as he should be as the Democratic presidential contender in New Jersey,'' Richards said.

New Jersey's electoral votes have gone to the Democratic candidate in the last three presidential elections and to the Republican in the five presidential elections before that.

Thirty percent of respondents said they had a favorable view of Kerry, compared with 28 percent who said unfavorable and 28 percent who chose ``mixed.'' Thirteen percent said they hadn't heard enough. On Bush, 35 percent said they had a favorable view; 40 percent chose unfavorable and 23 percent said mixed.

Quinnipiac polled registered voters and didn't seek to determine how likely they are to vote. In the last presidential election, 67.7 percent of New Jersey's registered voters actually cast ballots, according to Federal Election Commission records.

Former New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman last month said Bush has a base of support in New Jersey that stems from the generally high marks he gets for fighting terrorism. The state is across the Hudson River from New York, where terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center towers on Sept. 11, 2001.

Fighting Terrorism

``The president has always gotten credit for strong leadership on that and, barring an incident directed at U.S. interests that is perceived as having been preventable, he should continue strong there,'' said Whitman, who is heading Bush's campaign in the state.

Fifty percent of those surveyed said Bush would do the best job fighting terrorism, compared with 39 percent who picked Kerry. Those figures are similar to last month's poll, when 52 percent chose Bush and 38 percent went for Kerry.

The candidates are vying for Electoral College votes that are apportioned among states based on population. Those votes, rather than the national tally, determine who wins.

In the 2000 election, Gore beat Bush nationwide by 542,895 votes. Gore lost the election because of Bush's 537-vote margin of victory in Florida after the U.S. Supreme Court halted a recount. Florida's 25 electoral votes, awarded on a winner-take-all basis, gave Bush 271 votes to Gore's 267, one of the closest presidential elections in U.S. history.

North Carolina

North Carolina's electoral votes haven't gone to a Democratic presidential candidate since 1976, when Jimmy Carter, a former Georgia governor, won his bid for the White House.

Bush is leading Kerry among likely voters in the state 46 percent to 40 percent, according to a June 13-16 poll conducted for the News and Observer. Four percent favored Nader. Bush beat Gore in the state in 2000 56 percent to 43 percent.

Twenty-three percent of those surveyed said they would be more likely to vote for Kerry if he chose North Carolina Senator John Edwards, 51, as his running mate. Fifty-one percent said Edwards would make no difference on their vote.

The poll surveyed 600 adults 18 and older who told the interviewers that they were likely to vote in the presidential election. It had a margin of error of 4 percentage points.

West Virginia

A separate poll from the American Research Group Inc. found that Kerry and Bush are in a statistical tie in West Virginia, a state with five electoral votes that Bush won in 2000.

Forty-seven percent of the 600 likely voters surveyed June 15- 17 said they supported Kerry, compared with 44 percent for Bush and 3 percent for Nader, 70, a consumer activist. The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points. In a March survey, Kerry and Bush were tied at 46 percent.

West Virginia has voted for the Democratic presidential candidate five times in the last eight elections, and Bush's margin over Gore in 2000 was 6.5 percent. Both campaigns have run television ads in the state.

Bush is favored to win -- or Kerry isn't actively contesting - - in states including Texas, Georgia, and Indiana that together have a combined 197 electoral votes. Kerry is favored to win in 12 states, including California, New York and Connecticut, that have a combined 168 electoral votes.

That leaves 173 electoral votes from 14 states, including West Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, where polls taken in the last two months show the two candidates in a statistical dead heat.

The Electoral College tally is based on the most recent polls from Quinnipiac University, Los Angeles Times, Mason-Dixon Polling & Research Inc. in Washington and others and assumes that all of a state's votes go to the candidate leading in local polls.

To contact the reporter on this story: Kristin Jensen in Washington at kjensen@Bloomberg.net

Last Updated: June 23, 2004 15:00 EDT