NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Most Americans don't believe they benefited personally from the 2003 tax cut, according to a poll conducted for Money magazine, and would have preferred the government devoted resources to job creation or deficit reduction.

The poll of 1,007 people, conducted last week by International Communications Research, found that 60 percent said the tax cut did not personally help them. Only about a third of respondents said they benefited from the tax cut.

The poll also found Americans badly split along partisan lines on the question of whether the tax cut helped the economy. It found 79 percent of Republicans believed the tax cuts were somewhat or very successful in stimulating the economy, while 65 percent of Democrats said the cuts were not too successful or not at all successful.

Independents were more evenly divided but overall skeptical of the tax cut's help to the economy, with 43 percent saying the cuts were very or somewhat successful and 52 percent saying they were not too successful or not successful at all.

Overall 48.4 percent thought the tax cuts were very or somewhat helpful stimulating the economy, while 45.1 percent felt they were not at all or not too successful stimulating the economy.

The poll found 76 percent of those surveyed would have preferred the government devote resources to job creation rather than the tax cut, and even 54 percent of Republicans would have chosen jobs over tax cuts. Democrats, at 89 percent, and independents at 83 percent were overwhelmingly in favor of jobs programs rather than tax cuts.

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A plurality of Americans also would have preferred deficit reduction over the tax cut, with 49 percent choosing deficit reduction and only 42 percent picking the cut. While a majority of Republicans would have chosen tax cuts over deficit reduction, Democrats picked deficit reduction by a two-to-one margin, while 49 percent of independents would have preferred reducing the federal deficit.

Asked who would do a better job managing the economy, 41.4 percent of registered voters surveyed chose President Bush, narrowly edging out Democratic challenger John Kerry at 37.7 percent. That was just beyond the poll's 3.1 percent margin of error.

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A 51 percent majority said their own economic circumstance is the same as it was a year ago, while 27 percent said their own situation is better and 21 percent said it was worse. Among those who identified themselves as investors, 45 percent said their own financial condition was about the same as a year ago, despite the rise in U.S. stock markets during that time. Meanwhile 37.3 percent said they were better off while only 17.4 percent said they were worse off.