The Program on International Policy Attitudes has released another poll showing the divergence in beliefs about facts relevant to the US's future between Bush and Kerry supporters (warning: PDF). For instance, 48:7% of Bush:Kerry supporters believe the economy has gotten better in the past year, while 20:70% believe it's gotten worse. For the record, you can count me among the 7%, but I don't think it's been that big a gain.
Going down the report, the big divergence that jumps out at you is about Iraq:
| Good Idea | Bad Idea | |
|---|---|---|
| Bush Supporters | 85% | 13% |
| Kerry Supporters | 8% | 90% |
Kerry and the Democrats are right in figuring that Iraq is the big issue in this campaign, but they are wrong in the tactics they use to attack Bush over it. Instead of appealing to those who already hate Bush and support Kerry, Kerry should be educating Bush's supporters on what is really going on. They're wrong again in not effectively tying Bush's incompetence in Iraq into counterworrymongering over the greater issues of national security and the fights against al-Qaeda and terrorism in general, surrendering to Bush the all-important ground of national security in a time of conflict.
Another, mildly frightening statistic is that 23% of Bush supporters (and 3% of Kerry's) support the invasion of Iraq because "I support Bush's decision because he is the President". That's about an eighth of what is supposed to be a democratic republic, folks. This question (7a) was only asked of those who supported the invasion, but the percentages only add up to the 45% of Iraq war supporters, so we can assume they are for the whole sets.
Getting into the matter of clearly established facts, 47% of Bush supporters still believe Iraq had CBN stockpiles at the time of the March invasion and another quarter believe Iraq at least had a major program for developing such weapons (versus 13%+18% for Kerry's folks), while a slim majority of Kerry supporters take the infinitely amorphous view that Iraq had "limited activities that could be used to help develop weapons of mass destruction" and 22% (vs. 2% of Bush's) don't think they even had that much. As a matter of record, the promised "weapons of mass destruction" were not there, Iraq's scientists universally report being ordered to destroy the CBN stockpiles after 1991 and being idle afterwards, the numerical discrepancies are easily explained by Saddam's policy of executing factory managers who didn't report full production runs during the Persian Gulf war, and Iraq's commanders have admitted to running an Israeli-like strategic ambiguity plan to confuse the rest of the world into not knowing whether Iraq really has CBN weapons or not, in order to dissuade the US or Iran from attacking while appealing to the rest of the world for a reduction in sanctions.
The next big difference in beliefs is over the relationship between al Qaeda and their bitter enemies, the secular government of Iraq. 75% of Bush supporters believe "Iraq gave substantial support" to al-Qaeda, including 20% who somehow believe Iraq was behind the September 11 attacks. No more than 30% of the Kerry-supporting respondents believed either.
An even more clearly established fact is world opinion over the invasion. There are some countries whose populations generally approve of the invasion (Poland, Australia, and Israel, for instance) and many more which virulently oppose it. However, 26% of Bush supporters believe the majority of the world supported the invasion, and only 31% are aware that most of the world was against it.
The killer for the Kerry campaign is that "if, before the war, US intelligence services had concluded that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction and was not providing substantial support to al-Qaeda", 58% of Bush supporters would not support the invasion. If you'd been paying attention to the leaks, you'd know that the US intelligence agencies concluded exactly that, but somehow the information hasn't gotten out. 61% of Bush's people further believe that Bush would not have invaded Iraq if the intel people had been giving him the information they'd been giving him.
As a final big split, 80% of Bush supporters believe Bush is "honest and frank" while 96% of Kerry supporters know Bush is full of shit. Yes, we can be a little biased here at the Nuke Free Zone.
Ignorance also cuts both ways, as about a third of both candidates' supporters believe the US is a party to the Kyoto Accord, two fifths believe the US is a party to the International Criminal Court, and about half:two-thirds of all respondents believe Bush:Kerry supports US involvement in the International Criminal Court (both have come out against it, using similar language).
There are a few other interesting statistics in the poll, and a slashdot article about it. See also our article on a previous PIPA poll.
Posted by Warrior Tang at October 22, 2004 03:48 PM