A new poll shows opposition to the Iraq war is growing — with most Americans now opposing it:
Sixty percent of Americans oppose the U.S. war in Iraq, the highest number since polling on the subject began with the commencement of the war in March 2003, according to poll results and trends released Wednesday.
And a majority of poll respondents said they would support the withdrawal of at least some U.S. troops by the end of the year, according to results from the Opinion Research Corporation poll conducted last week on behalf of CNN. The corporation polled 1,047 adult Americans by telephone.
According to trends, the number of poll respondents who said they did not support the Iraq war has steadily risen as the war stretched into a second and then a third year. In the most recent poll, 36 percent said they were in favor of the war — half of the peak of 72 percent who said they were in favor of the war as it began.
If you project this trending, what can happen to reverse it? And do you see anything like that on the horizon? MORE:
Sixty-one percent, however, said they believed at least some U.S. troops should be withdrawn from Iraq by the end of the year. Of those, 26 percent said they would favor the withdrawal of all troops, while 35 percent said not all troops should be withdrawn. Another 34 percent said they believed the current level of troops in Iraq should be maintained.
Asked about a timetable for withdrawal of troops from Iraq, 57 percent of poll respondents said they supported the setting of such a timetable, while 40 percent did not and 4 percent had no opinion. Only half the sample, or about 524 people, was asked the timetable question.
This makes reports even more fascinating that the Bush administration and the GOP plan to paint the Democrats as the party of cut-and-run, and weak on defense in light of Tuesday’s victory of anti-war candidate Ned Lamont over Senator Joe Lieberman in the Connecticut Democratic primary. With several Democratic political bigwigs pledging support of Lamont and stressing how his election undercores American’s desire for a “new direction,” the GOP will reportedly try to turn the 2006 elections into a referendum on the Democrats’ fitness to wield power, rather than George Bush and the GOP’s record in power.
If these polls continue along this course, this could be a risky strategy…but, then again, the GOP and the White House have rolled the political dice before. And won.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.