July 1, 2003
Warbaby says:
Polls are back in the news (will they ever go away?) First of all, Gallup shows a mild trend in the nation's grasp on reality. PIPA shows how tenuous that grasp is. And BeeKay sends us a lovely link to a poll analysis site.
Gallup has released a new poll analysis on July 1. Headlined "Fewer Say Iraq Worth Going to War Over: Failure to find weapons of mass destruction, continuing conflict appear to have major impact"
One of the most notable changes since the beginning of June is the dramatic increase in Americans who think there was something fishy about the administration claims that Iraqi weapons of mass destruction presented a clear and present danger.
Of the 42% of the country who now think the invasion of Iraq was mistaken, the two most widely held justifications for opposition to the war were a) Fraudulent claims/no weapons of mass destruction/lied to the people about them and b) Nothing has been resolved in Iraq/waste of human lives. About 10% of the people answering the poll gave one of these two reasons as why they opposed the war.
The number of people who supported the war dropped sharply from 73% in April to 56% currently. Similarly, the number opposing the war has risen from 23% in April to 42% now. Overall, Americans are getting over the excitement of the invasion. In January, the oppostion to the war was 42%, the same as it is now.
In a similar trend, confidence that Iraqi weapons of mass destruction will be found is falling, now down to only 53% who think that it is either "very" or "somewhat" likely that WMD will be uncovered in Iraq. In March, the number was 84%.
At the same time, desire to keep American troops in Iraq still remains high (meaning that some people who opposed the war approve of the US trying to stabilize the situation) with 69% supporting continued occupation. Still, the confidence we will be able to establish a stable government in Iraq has declined from 65% expressing some confidence in March to 55% now.
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Meanwhile, the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland just completed a poll on a "welter of issues" about the war in Iraq.
One of the surprising findings is that 56% of the public believes the administration was "stretching the truth" about WMD, while 10% believes they were "lying" and only 32% believes they were "being truthful." This is a dramatic shift from the attitudes of only two weeks ago. Also, 63% believe Congress should investigate the WMD intelligence agencies performance in providing intelligence on weapons of mass destruction. 34% (which is very close to the commited Republican voting base) believes there should not be an investigation.
American's ability to form an accurate picture of events remains troublingly out of touch. The number who believe that WMD have already been found remains at 24%, the same as a month ago. No WMD have been found, though several times it has been claimed by the administration that this has occurred.
In a somewhat bizarre reversal of reality, among Republicans (who as a group had stronger delusions of the discovery of WMD, 34% believing this has already happened) the number who thought WMD had already been found rose to 40% among those who said they followed the news closely. This paradoxical increase in ignorance suggests that following the media is actually hazardous to getting a realistic understanding of world events.
Unsurprisingly, there is a strong correlation between believing that WMD have already been discovered and believing the Bush administration has been truthful.
Equally striking is the increase in the belief that Iraq was directly involved with al Qaeda in the 9/11 attacks. In February, only 20% believed this was so, but now the number has risen to 25%. But the real zinger is that fully 52% of all Americans believe that evidence of "close links" between Iraq and al Qaeda have been found and only 43% understand that it has not. As in the other instances of delusion, Republicans who say they are following Iraq news closely are the most wrong, with a whopping 78%(!) thinking such evidence has been found.
The increase in delusionality is exactly what is predicted by cognitive dissonance theory. For a brief explanation of the paradox of reality being no cure for the delusional, see our earlier article on this phenomenon.
There's lots more in the detailed report from PIPA.
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And finally, BeeKay sends this link to a lovely site for poll statistics junkies: Dr. PollKatz's Pool of Polls. Compiled by the mysterious, opinionated but rigorously even-handed Dr. Limerick, the Pool of Polls contains fascinating cross-tabulations and correlation studies showing the relative biases, accuracy and a host of other statistics relating to the various polling organizations.
Be warned, however, you'd better have a serious hankering for numbers before you dive into the good doctor's pool. The site is not fluffed up with goo-goo graphic design, but the data reduction is a statistics junkie's delight. Highly recommended for the mathematically inclined.
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