Iraq the Vote: Hotline/Westhill Takes Up the Challenge

Legacy blog posts Polls in the News

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:

  1. How do the results to the four specific expectation questions look when cross-tabulated by their expectations for success?
  2. 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)

Mark Blumenthal

Mark Blumenthal is political pollster with deep and varied experience across survey research, campaigns, and media. The original "Mystery Pollster" and co-creator of Pollster.com, he explains complex concepts to a multitude of audiences and how data informs politics and decision-making. A researcher and consultant who crafts effective questions and identifies innovative solutions to deliver results. An award winning political journalist who brings insights and crafts compelling narratives from chaotic data.