A new poll indicates John Kerry has a lot of work to cut into President Bush's lead in Alabama at this stage of the campaign.

A statewide telephone survey of 590 likely November voters was conducted July 22-through Wednesday by the Alabama Education Association's Capital Survey Research Center. It found the Bush-Cheney ticket with 56 percent support, Kerry and Edwards with 34 percent and 10 percent undecided.

The center's director, Gerald Johnson, says his analysis of the poll results suggests that black voters made up most of the undecided and would likely be Kerry voters in November.

Even with that additional 10 percent going his way, Kerry would still trail Bush in Alabama by almost the same double-digit margin by which Al Gore lost the state to Bush in the 2000 election.

Johnson says it would be difficult to change these numbers at this point.

He says 51 percent of the Alabama voters surveyed said the country was on the right track. In a May poll, that figure was 44 percent.

Also, nearly 62 percent said they were very or somewhat satisfied with Bush's job performance, 55 percent had that sentiment toward his handling of Iraq, and 58 percent felt that way about his handling of the economy.