Polls

CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll shows conflicted feelings among Iraqis over the war and its impact...

... Most interviews were done between March 22 and April 9 -- before the latest flare-up of violence... Iraqi interviewers conducted face-to-face surveys with 3,444 adults in Arabic and Kurdish in respondents' homes. The poll covered urban and rural areas throughout Iraq, representing about 93 percent of the population. It has a sampling error of plus or minus 2 percentage points... 53 percent said they would feel less safe if the U.S.-led coalition left immediately. About half as many -- 28 percent -- said they would feel more safe. Sixty-nine percent said they or their families would be in danger if they were seen cooperating with the coalition... Two-thirds -- 67 percent -- said troops were not trying at all to keep ordinary Iraqis from being killed in exchanges of gunfire, while 18 percent said the Americans were trying only a little and 11 percent said they were trying a lot... Seventy-one percent surveyed said they saw troops mostly as occupiers, while 19 percent said they viewed them as liberators. Asked how they viewed troops at the time of the invasion a year ago, the respondents were split, with 43 percent saying they saw the coalition forces as occupiers and another 43 percent saying they considered them liberators at the time...
~ Background info; how the poll was conducted. The sample was randomly selected. About 2% refused to participate, implying that an astounding 98% took part. Translation; poll's accuracy is probably very good.


New York Times/CBS News Poll concludes US Support for War Is Down Sharply

... Asked whether the United States had done the right thing in taking military action against Iraq, 47 percent of respondents said it had, down from 58 percent a month earlier and 63 percent in December, just after American forces captured Saddam Hussein. Forty-six percent said the United States should have stayed out of Iraq, up from 37 percent last month and 31 percent in December... The diminished public support for the war did not translate into any significant advantage for Mr. Bush's Democratic challenger, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts. The poll showed the two men remaining in a statistical dead heat... The poll, conducted from Friday to Tuesday, came during a month that has seen more American soldiers killed in Iraq than in any other month since the invasion 13 months ago. In the days before the poll was conducted, a Web site obtained and publicly released for the first time photographs of soldiers' coffins returning to the United States from Iraq... The poll questioned 1,042 people. It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.
~ How poll was done more on methodology.

Iraq Blog Count's conclusion; People in Iraq are becoming less happy with prolonged and increased levels of violence. People in the US are also growing unhappy with increased levels of violence. War, unsurprisingly, is not going down well with civilians right now, regardless of geographic location. The rhetoric that accompanies war may be keeping speech writers busy, but everyone else is wondering when we are going to begin seeing constructive positive change. Words alone are probably not going to cut it in the next round of election campaigns.