When is the war not going well? Depends on who’s writing the headlines and analysis.
Public Confidence In War Effort Falters
That’s what the Pew Research Center says is the result of their poll, with an adjoining graph that shows public perception of how the war is going plummiting to low levels.
But … the graph starts at what looks like the 30% mark. So when people answering a certain way drop to 38%, it looks like it’s the bottom of the barrel, when it remains over a third.
And … the question asked is “How well is the U.S. military effort in Iraq going?” The graph is how many people think it is going Very Well. That’s the highest ranking (vs. Fairly Well, Not Too Well, Not At All Well, or Don’t Know/Refused). And that data has, in fact, dropped over the last days:
The percentage of the public thinking the war was going very well was as high as 71% on Friday and Saturday, only to fall to 52% on Sunday and 38% Monday as the public learned of American casualties and POW’s. Overall, the interviews by Sunday and Monday found about as many people thinking the war effort was going just fairly well (41%) as opposed to very well (45%).
But look at it in a more aggregate fashion. How many people think the war is going well? 86%. That’s remarkable for “faltering” public confidence.
Clyde at the Command Post got the breakdown of the data from Pew.
| Answer | Thursday | Friday | Saturday | Sunday | Monday |
| Very well | 49.9 | 70.9 | 70.7 | 51.6 | 38.1 |
| Fairly well | 30.2 | 22.8 | 22.2 | 34.3 | 47.2 |
| subtotals | 80.1 | 93.7 | 92.9 | 85.9 | 85.3 |
So while the number of folks thinking the military effort is going well is lower than over the weekend, it’s higher than when war broke out.
I don’t put a lot of stock in polls of this sort, both because it’s asking for a relatively uninformed opinion, and because it is going to be subject to both spin and volatility. Having a daily national referendum on military decisions is not terribly helpful in actually winning a conflict.
But I do find it interesting as an example of how you can spin data. Especially when you consider that AP picked up the story, but dropped “Very” from what rank Pew was reporting, making it seem, well …
WASHINGTON — Images of battered American POWs, a downed Apache helicopter and U.S. fatalities in Iraq have had a dramatic impact on the public’s perception of the war. Just 38 percent said the conflict was going well Monday, down from 71 percent on Friday, according to a poll by the Pew Research Center.
This is something that Edward Tufte would call chartjunk. It’s a way of obfuscating what the data actually shows, which is a rise in how the sample thought the war is going followed by a modest, and possibly statistically insignificant, decrease since last Thursday.
What will be interesting is to see how the numbers go in a few more days. We’ve become all to used to very low numbers of U.S. casualties over the last twenty years. It’s going to take some steel to keep the faith when more of our soldiers die. I hate to think about it, but it’s part of the reality of war.
What I want to see will come much later and that will answer the question: Was it worth it?
I think folks are too worried that the US will cave if it takes more than a handful of casualties. Especially if Iraqi forces keep pulling the stunts they have been, and it’s clear that one reason for the casualties is not ineptness, but our zeal to keep Iraqi civilian casualties down.
Still, it’s a possibility. Indeed, with the heavy media coverage on this war, from all angles, the impact of even a handful of lives lost (on any side) has been magnfied. Ten US Marines killed would rate headlines around the world; out of 40,000 troops landing at Omaha Beach, 2,200 were killed in a single day. I don’t know if we just have an increased sensitivity, or if the “reporting rate” is higher, more immediate.
As to the “Was it worth it?” question — that can’t be settled for decades. The verdict of history is rarely clear in advance.