(MONEY Magazine) – If the 1996 Presidential race has you scratching your head, don't worry: That's a perfectly reasonable reaction. After all, on the Republican side, former Senator Bob Dole, who spent the past decade raising taxes to cut the deficit, is suddenly pushing mammoth, potentially budget-busting tax cuts. Democrat Bill Clinton, whose 1993 health reform plan was the biggest proposed expansion of government since Medicare, is taking credit for dismantling the welfare system, while promoting the virtues of smaller government and deficit reduction. Finally, Reform Party candidate Ross Perot, the billionaire businessman whose ties to the Nixon White House may have helped his former company, EDS, win juicy Medicare contracts in the '70s, is running against the corrupting culture of money in Washington.

With today's politics in wonderland, it's no surprise that voters are confused. Indeed, a new nationwide exclusive MONEY poll by ICR Survey Research Group finds that a stunning 41% of voters who'd already decided how to vote actually prefer a candidate with whom they disagree on critical personal-finance issues. We know that because just before the Republican convention we asked a random sample of 511 Americans to choose which candidate's ideas they liked best on a variety of pocketbook issues such as taxes, health care, jobs, retirement and education. To avoid bias, we didn't say which proposals belonged to which candidate. The results: Of the 27% who were planning to vote for Dole, 41% agreed with Clinton on a majority of issues. Of the 50% who were planning to vote for Clinton, 27% sided with Dole on a majority of issues. Of the 13% who were planning to vote for Perot, 53% went with Dole on a majority of issues, while 42% liked Clinton's ideas. (See who you really favor by taking our quiz on page 91.)

Among our poll's striking findings:

--Nearly 40% of you say you don't want tax cuts. A startling 39% of Americans agree with Perot that no tax cuts are good tax cuts. Still, the majority--55%--aren't so high-minded. Some 28% of poll respondents endorse Dole's hefty tax cuts, while 27% support Clinton's slimmed-down alternative of targeted tax cuts.