The full Q asked was:

Do you think the U.S. should keep military troops in Iraq until the situation has stabilized, or do you think the U.S. should bring its troops home as soon as possible?

Compare with the NBC/WSJ poll from Nov 1-5:

When it comes to the war in Iraq, which of the following statements comes closer to your point of view? The most responsible thing we can do is find a way to withdraw most of our troops from Iraq by the beginning of 2009. The most responsible thing we can do is to remain in Iraq until the situation in the country is stable.

Withdraw by 2009 – 55%
Stay until stable – 40%

Other polls with this basic formulation show similar results (e.g., ABC/WaPo, 9/27).

Now compare with CBS from mid-October:

From what you know about the U.S. involvement in Iraq, how much longer would you be willing to have large numbers of U.S. troops remain in Iraq: less than a year, one to two years, two to five years or longer than five years?

Less than a year – 45%
One to two years – 27%
Two to five years- 12%
More than 5 years- 5%
DK – 11%

This looks much closer to an even breakdown between the “less than a year” and “more than a year” groups. And you would find a similar pattern in prior polling.

In sum, the response depends on the nature of the question. Ask it as a leave/stay and most will say leave. Ask it as a “how long” and it breaks evenly between short-term/long-term.

This isn’t an “easy touchdown” for the Dems for at least two reasons.

First, Iraq as an issue is losing saliency as conditions have improved. That’s why we’re hearing so much about the economy already.

Second, the US is starting talks with Iraq about drawing down to about 50K troops by the end of 2008 (i.e., election day). If this happens, Iraq will lose a lot of traction as an issue. The GOP nominee will agree with the drawdown, and the most likely Dem nominee — HRC — is already on record foreseeing some US troops in Iraq for some time to come. A marginal difference would, if anything, tend to demoralize the nutroots. Maybe they’ll get to vote for RP instead.

Karl on November 28, 2007 at 12:41 AM

Those numbers can be crunched a number of ways. The Dems have been able to hammer Bush by framing it as “leave/stay.” That’s why Reid and Pelosi were pushing timetables and using the “no light at the end of the tunnel” and “open-ended commitment” slogans. Bush wants victory , which puts him in the “stay” box. The effective rejoinder was the “cut and run” slogan, which reframes the debate around the split MB4 suggests. The poll numbers also show folks trust the military commanders more than either Bush or Congress, which is why Bush started emphasizing that he was taking their advice.

The “more/less than a year” split is also not as literal as one would think by looking only at recent polls. This same split shows up in years of polling, when one would think that the 1-2 year people would have moved into the less than a year box over that period. It’s an example of poll interpretation being as much art as science.

Karl on November 28, 2007 at 2:31 AM