Unfortunately, it’s a busy day in MP-land, with time for just another quick update on recent polling on retrospective and prospective views of the war in Iraq. As noted here two weeks ago, CBS News included two questions on an April 2004 survey at the urging of the Duke academics whose work we have been discussing. Last week (July 13-14), CBS conducted a new poll (n=632 adults) that updates these results.
Here’s a quick summary (see the CBS PDF release for full results):
Q10. "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?" Forty-eight percent (48%) now say it was the "right thing;" not much different than 45% in June and 47% in April 2004.
Q13. "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 establishing a democratic government in Iraq, somewhat likely to succeed, not very likely to succeed, or not at all likely to succeed in establishing a democratic government there?" They asked this question of a random half sample on this survey: 61% said the US is very or somewhat likely to succeed, statistically unchanged from 60% in April 2004.
CBS split their sample to try a more general variant of the prospective question:
Q14. "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 in Iraq?" 62% said the US was very or somewhat likely to succeed.
These results are nearly identical to those obtained on similar questions asked on the Hotline/Westhill poll conducted in early July (MP commentary here).
