A new poll suggests a growing number of South Florida Hispanic voters have concerns about the Bush administration's handling of Cuba policy.

BY PETER WALLSTEN

Months of growing tensions over the Bush administration's approach to Cuba are taking a toll on the president's standing among Cuban Americans -- one of the Republican Party's most crucial voting groups in Florida -- just as his reelection campaign is getting under way, according to a new poll.

The survey shows that more than one-third of South Florida Hispanic voters -- a group consisting primarily of GOP-leaning Cuban Americans -- disapproves of the job the president has done ''promoting democracy and regime change'' in Fidel Castro's Cuba.

Those results, compiled for Univisión Channel 23 by Washington pollster Rob Schroth, are the latest indication that Bush could be hurt politically by complaints from some exile leaders that he has failed to deliver on campaign promises to crack down on Castro.

And they suggest that efforts by Bush in recent months to improve that record -- indicting the Cuban air force pilots who shot down Brothers to the Rescue planes, limiting travel, and establishing a special commission to pave the way toward democracy in Cuba -- might not have been enough to soothe the hard feelings.

Democratic strategists believe that if they can peel away even a portion of the Cuban-American electorate, their nominee can win Florida -- and the White House -- just as President Clinton did in 1996, when he won an estimated 40 percent of the Cuban vote.

Bush won about 80 percent of the state's 400,000 Cuban-American voters in 2000 but won Florida by just 537 votes.

The poll results come as the Democratic National Committee is devising a strategy to court Cuban-American voters using a massive advertising campaign designed to paint Bush as insincere on the issues important to them.

''Cuban Americans are coming to the slow realization that the Republican administration they backed so heavily has not brought an end to the Castro regime,'' said Schroth, who also conducts polls for The Herald and some Democratic candidates. ``Sooner or later, voters begin to look elsewhere when they don't get satisfaction from any one political party.''

The poll, conducted Feb. 27-29, surveyed the views of 400 self-described registered Hispanic voters in Miami-Dade and Broward counties, with a margin of error of 4.9 percentage points. Seventy-one percent of the poll respondents were Cuban American.

NOT ALL BAD

The results are not all bad for Bush, suggesting that he is still a strong vote-getter despite the concerns about his handling of Cuba.

Bush leads Democratic presidential front-runner John Kerry among all Hispanics in Miami-Dade and Broward counties by a 64-25 margin. His margin is even stronger among Cuban Americans, more than three-quarters of whom back Bush compared to just 15 percent for Kerry.

'That's pretty friggin' impressive,'' said Neil Newhouse, a Republican pollster who has surveyed Florida for Gov. Jeb Bush's campaigns. ``There may be some disapproval among Cubans about the way the president is handling the issue, but there is absolutely no indication that it would prevent them from voting for him.''

The other major Democrat still in the race, North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, does not perform as well as Kerry among Hispanic voters, the survey shows.

Among Democratic Hispanics -- the bulk of whom are not Cuban -- Kerry leads Edwards by a more than 4-1 margin with the state's presidential primary just one week away.

Kerry's ''upside is bright and his downside is equally perilous,'' Schroth said. ``It will be a matter of how well the campaign is waged.''

The fight for Hispanic voters is likely to be tricky for both Kerry and Bush.

Kerry, a Massachusetts senator, has a mixed record on Cuba issues. He has both supported and criticized certain aspects of the U.S. trade embargo with Cuba.

He once blamed the embargo on ''Florida politics,'' a position he stood by during an interview last fall when he said he was simply speaking the ``truth.''

Republican strategists, who are already attacking Kerry as an indecisive decision-maker, are likely to make the same case to Hispanic voters in Florida.

But the new survey results lend credibility to a new campaign being devised by operatives for the Democratic National Committee and other local Cuban-American Democrats hoping to exploit a lingering rift between the Bush administration and the exile leadership.

Bush was criticized openly by several leading Cuban-American Republicans -- and even by his own brother, Gov. Jeb Bush -- last year when the government repatriated 12 suspected Cuban boat hijackers under a deal with Castro's regime to give them prison time rather than death sentences.

SENATE BATTLE

In the battle for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Democrat Bob Graham, the survey shows that Hispanics are likely to back their own in the August primaries.

On the Democratic side, Miami-Dade Mayor Alex Penelas, who is Cuban American, leads rivals Betty Castor and Peter Deutsch by more than 5-1 -- although nearly one-quarter of the voters are undecided.

Among Republicans, former U.S. Housing Secretary Mel Martinez, also Cuban American, would win easily over all of his rivals among Hispanics.