Another update on the work of Duke academics Peter Feaver, Christopher Gelpi and Jason Reifler concerning the underpinnings of popular support for the war in Iraq (covered here, here and here). The results of the latest poll from The Hotline & Westhill Partners, released today, includes questions comparable to those used by Feaver and his colleagues and some new measures that can help us understand what Americans mean when they say they expect the U.S. to "succeed" in Iraq.
Some background – A column by the David Ignatius in yesterday’s Washington Post provides a concise summary of one aspect of the Gelpi-Feaver-Reifler thesis:
They argue that it isn’t casualties per se that drive U.S. public opinion about war. Instead, it’s the public perception of whether a war is winnable.
"When the public believes the mission will succeed, then the public is willing to continue supporting the mission, even as costs mount. When the public thinks victory is not likely, even small costs will be highly corrosive," the authors write.
They also argue, in a second paper, that voters willingness to reelect George Bush in 2004 had more to do with retrospective judgments about whether he did the "right thing" in deciding to go to war than about prospective attitudes about success.
The Hotline/Westhill poll released today includes two questions that closely resemble the measures used in the Gelpi-Feaver-Reifler research:
Looking back, do you think the United States did the right thing in taking military action against Iraq, or should the U.S. have stayed out? 46% did the right thing; 46% should have stayed out; 8% neither/don’t know
Regardless of whether you think taking military action in Iraq was the right thing to do, would you say that the U.S. is very likely to succeed in Iraq, somewhat likely to succeed, not very likely to succeed, or not at all likely to succeed? 60% very/somewhat likely; 36% very/somewhat unlikely; 4% don’t know
As Gelpi, et. al. put it, "out in their paper, the central role of ‘expectations of success’ begs the obvious next question: how does the public define and measure success in Iraq? (p. 37)" They try to answer this question with their own survey measures, summarized on pp. 37-38 (and tables 6 & 7) of their paper. They present a list of possible measures of success and asked respondents to choose the best. Their bottom line:
The public does not measure success in terms of body bags. On the contrary, the public claimed to focus on whether the coalition was in fact winning over the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people, as measured by Iraqi willingness to cooperate with coalition forces.
The Hotline/Westhill survey offers some additional data on this issue. Rather than ask respondents how they might judge success, they ask more detailed questions about expectations. Specifically, they ask respondents to rate "how confident" that each of the following might occur "in the next year" (numbers are the total of those answering "very confident" or "somewhat confident"):
- 64% are confident "that the Iraqi people will be better off than they are today"
- 47% are confident "that there will be significant reductions in U.S. troop strength"
- 41% are confident "that the U.S. will have achieved its goals in Iraq"
- 37% are confident "that Iraq will have a stable, democratic government"
MP notes that 60% of the same respondents expect the US to "succeed in Iraq." This result suggests that judgments about whether the Iraqi people are now "better off" than before are more influential in driving an overall expectation of success than judgments about whether a "stable, democratic government" in Iraq is a realistic possibility.
The folks at The Hotline and Westhill Partners can use their data to test this proposition. Which of these four measures of expectations can best explain why Americans expect the US to succeed or fail in Iraq? Specifically, MP wonders:
- How do the results to the four specific expectation questions look when cross-tabulated by their expectations for success?
- More to the point (but a bit harder to explain): What would a simple regression analysis of show that treated the expectation-for-success question as a dependent variable and the four specific questions as independent variables?
Here is hoping our friends at The Hotline indulge us one more time.
(Typos corrected)
“MP notes that 60% of the same respondents expect the US to “succeed in Iraq.” This result suggests that judgments about whether the Iraqi people are now “better off” than before are more influential in driving an overall expectation of success than judgments about whether a “stable, democratic government” in Iraq is a realistic possibility.”
“Better off” than they were before the invasion, or better off than they were when these data were collected?
Given the huge numbers of casualties among the Iraqi people, the massive disruption of their lives, if they don’t end up with a stable democracy after all is done, exactly how could they be better off?
The question of how to measure success is important. Fever et al argue it is “long-term” success that matters greatly. Success for them means, “Will we win (in the end)”? As far as I can tell, they do not have or report results for a measure of short-term success (“how are things going militarily now?”), so without a head to head comparison, we have to take them at their word. But I am always suspicious that ordinary people can make these kinds of prospective judgments on their own. If they try, they probably do it by looking to elites for guidance.
The Pew, btw, asks two questions about success (and the retrospecitive question too: “was it the right thing to do?”).
They ask, “Some people are comparing Iraq to the war in Vietnam thirty years ago. Do you think Iraq will turn out to be another Vietnam, or do you think the U.S. will accomplish its goals in Iraq?”
1 Will be another Vietnam
2 U.S. will accomplish its goals
3 Too early to tell (VOL.)
9 Don’t know/Refused (VOL.)
They also ask: “How well is the U.S. military effort in Iraq going?”
1 Very well
2 Fairly well
3 Not too well
4 Not at all well
9 Don’t know/Refused (Vol)
My analysis suggests that the latter is more important than the former, and the former is, I think, a good, if different, measure of long-term success (will we win?)
The fact that the latter measure is more important suggests how casualties can matter too. They serve as a short term diagnostic tool of whether we are making progress.
Hi All,
I am very glad to see other people asking these questions on surveys. I think we can learn a lot by starting to explore the differences among these various ways of tapping attitudes toward success. I was also gratified to see that the new data on overall judgements about success line up pretty well with our data.
I wanted to make three comments in reponse to Mike Cobb’s very thoughtful concerns.
First, on prospective vs. current perceptions of success. I agree that it is difficult for people to develop accurate measures of whether we will succeed, but I don’t think that means that people don’t have attitudes about prospective likelihood of success. It just means that their attitudes are based on hunches, guesses, opinion leaders or something of the sort. In a chapter of the book we are working on, we do try to take on the question of where these perceptions come from (including allowing for the fact that attitudes about “right thing” and success cause each other.
Second, in terms of comparing prospective vs. current perceptions of success, you are right that we don’t really take that on in the papers. We DID as both versions of the question in our final survey (October 04) and in the book manuscript we do comapre the two measures. As you would expect, the two are strongly correlated, and current beliefs about success does a decent job of predicting percpetions of future success, but there is some distance between the responses. In general, people are more optimistic about the future than the present. We tried using both measures in our regressions. Both measures work, but the prospective measure works better in terms of having a larger impact on casualty tolerance (about twice as big an effect).
Finally, on whether people use casualties as an indicator of success, I think our data suggest that is not so. That is, we asked people how they would judge if we are succeeding, and very few (2-4%) said US casualties (even though we offered that to them as a response.
Thanks again for the thoughtful comments and I hope we can continue this discussion.
Best,
Chris
Yet another update…
CBS once again asks questions both about the current levels of success and the prospective judgements.
Check out their summary of the data:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/07/15/opinion/polls/main709488_page2.shtml
Interestingly, these numbers show little change from our October ’04 data in terms of prospective judgements of success, but about a 12% drop in those saying things are going well right now. That would seem to suggest that respondents may indeed have seperate attitudes about the two questions (though undoubtedly they are related as I said above).