Sept. 23 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. President George W. Bush leads Democratic challenger John Kerry 49 percent to 41 percent among registered voters in Florida, a Quinnipiac University poll found. Independent candidate Ralph Nader drew 5 percent.

The survey of 819 registered voters was conducted from Sept. 18 to Sept. 21 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.4 percentage points. The findings reverse Kerry's lead of 47 percent to 41 percent in an Aug. 12 Quinnipiac poll.

Seventy-eight percent of Florida voters approved of the way Bush responded to recent hurricanes, the poll showed.

``The ill winds of the hurricane season have blown a lot of political good for President Bush in Florida, pushing him ahead of Senator John Kerry, who led in the sunshine state in August,'' Clay Richards, assistant director of the Hamden, Connecticut- based polling institute, said in a statement.

A candidate needs 270 electoral votes to be elected president. Florida has 27, fourth largest among the 50 states.

A review of state-by-state polls and historical voting data by Bloomberg News shows Bush ahead in 20 states, including Texas and Alabama, with 183 electoral votes. Kerry, a four-term U.S. senator from Massachusetts leads in 12 states, including New York and Maryland, with 160 electoral votes. In 16 states that have 195 electoral votes, including Pennsylvania and Minnesota, results of the most recent polls are within the margin of error.

Florida is among 17 states that Bush won or lost by 7 percentage points or less in the last election. Bush was awarded the state's electoral votes after the U.S. Supreme Court halted a recount 36 days after the election, leaving the Republican with a 537-vote margin over Democrat Al Gore out of about 6 million ballots cast.

That gave Bush 271 electoral votes to 267 for Gore, who won the national popular vote tally by 544,000 ballots.

To contact the reporter on this story: Catherine Dodge in Washington at cdodge1@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: September 23, 2004 08:02 EDT