frankhagan.com

This UPI/Zogby Poll on Iraq, released 8/28, shows a majority of Americans now believe the war in Iraq is not a lost cause, while partisans remain at the fringes of opinion:

A majority of Americans – 54% – believe the United States has not lost the war in Iraq, but there is dramatic disagreement on the question between Democrats and Republicans, a new UPI/Zogby Interactive poll shows. While two in three Democrats (66%) said the war effort has already failed, just 9% of Republicans say the same.

Our perceptions of how these things should work sometimes color what we emphasize in polling results. There aren’t many places talking about two shocking numbers: those who believe the war is not a lost cause, and those who believe we should leave (I’m tempted to put the clarifier “anyway” to the end, but that would make the results seem more clear than reading the UPI analysis linked below indicates). ElephantBiz links to analysis by Martin Sieff, UPI Senior News Analyst:

The poll, which was conducted Aug. 17-20, found that twice as many Americans thought the current 110th Congress’s performance on Iraq was worse than the three previous Republican controlled Congresses. In all, only 20.2 percent of those polled believed that the current Congress had been better than those of the previous Republican ones. Some 42.8 percent said it was worse.

These results appear to be a devastating repudiation of the political strategy followed by Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill.

But read the full analysis; it also spells out bad news for Republicans:

The poll also revealed a deeply divided American nation on the basic subject of whether the war in Iraq should still be fought or not. Some 30.2 percent still strongly supported the war with 12.4 percent saying they somewhat supported it. These figures gave Bush a combined support base of 42.6 percent.

The figures opposing the war were considerably higher, but it was the intensity of the opposition rather than the numbers of those opposed that will be disquieting to Republican Party political strategists.

Only 6.5 percent of respondents “somewhat” opposed the continuation of the war, but a whopping 50.0 percent “strongly” opposed it.

Some 50 percent in opposition is the strongest such figure in opposition to any war the United States has fought since the grimmest period of the Vietnam War. But it is the intense commitment of a full half of the electorate to oppose the war that is the more significant figure. It is much larger than the regular Democratic support base in almost every presidential election over the past 30 years.

With a nuanced, mixed results poll that IMO shows America’s indecision about a path forward Texas Rainmaker notes that mainstream media tends to focus on the high number of those oppposing the war, and virtually ignores the rising numbers of those who think the war is winnable. We’ll see that from both sides in the debate in the days ahead. Arm yourself with the complete truth.

Expect the political fight to be over the numbers now, with Dems starting to question the methodology of the Pentagon’s assertions that less people are dying in Iraq (see Ezra Klein for an example). There are two edges to the statistics sword: if the numbers are fudged, people will react with a wide swing in opinion. But, if they are not tought to be manipulated, those complaining about them will be marginalized.

Frank Politics