Why are Iraq "right decision" numbers up?

With no significant evidence of progress in Iraq, why are poll numbers up for whether we made the right decision to invade? Here's a New York Times Week in Review article on the puzzle:

The Times and CBS News conducted a poll from July 9 to July 17 with 1,554 adults, mostly about Hillary Clinton...

In the poll, The Times and CBS News posed a standard question that asks respondents to think back to the invasion. Specifically, the poll asked: “Looking back, do you think the United States did the right thing in taking military action against Iraq, or should the United States have stayed out?”

Forty-two percent of those polled said the United States did the right thing, and 54 percent said the United States should have stayed out of Iraq. The last time the question was asked, in May, 35 percent said taking military action against Iraq was the right thing and 61 percent said the United States should have stayed out.

The July numbers represented a change. It was counterintuitive. None of the other war-related questions showed change. Mr. Bush’s approval rating had not changed. Nor had approval of his handling of Iraq. The level of support for Mr. Bush’s decision to send more troops to Iraq — the “surge” — was about the same as it had been in past polls. Support for the decision to go to war had risen modestly and nothing else in the poll could explain it.

A Newsweek poll conducted July 11-12 had a similar finding for the same question. But the magazine had not asked its question since December, so it is hard to know whether its current reading measured any recent change.

...When the second round of results came back, the numbers were nearly identical to the ones found in the poll about Mrs. Clinton. In the poll conducted last weekend with 889 adults, 42 percent of the respondents said the United States did the right thing in taking military action against Iraq, and 51 percent said the United States should have stayed out.

There was also a drop in the number of people who said the war was going badly. In the latest poll, 66 percent of Americans said things were going badly for the United States in its efforts to bring stability and order to Iraq. That is down from 76 percent who said the same thing in May.

Here is a plot of the "right decision" numbers over time, which shows that Republicans, Democrats and independents all ticked upward:

I can't come up with a convincing explanation -- can you? (One possibility, of course, is that it's a statistical artifact, but the fact that three polls have all shown an increase for the same question suggests that it's not.)

Comments

[Todd Dugdale]

Read the actual poll and this "mystery" is cleared up:

"Many of those who said the invasion was correct made it clear, however, that they are no longer convinced the United States should remain there."

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/24/us/24poll.html?fta=y

So, this is no indication whatsoever that support for the surge is rising, or that the public believes it will "succeed".

"But two-thirds of those polled said the United States should reduce its forces in Iraq, or remove them altogether. "

"The latest poll made clear that a two-thirds majority of Americans continue to say the war is going badly."

...and this is with the right-wing blogosphere going full-tilt on it's "success in Iraq" line, and the Administration putting the pressure on generals to come up with good news or face the "Shinseki treatment".

[Rob]

The Times is beside itself. It will have to redouble its efforts to convince people it was a mistake to get rid of Saddam Hussein.

[Tom Maguire]

My guess is inspired in part by the Times review of the latest Iraq war film - the film seems to implicitly grant that invasion was plausible and the war was "winnable" until mistakes were made in the post-liberation reconstruction phase (e.g., disbanding the army, de-B'aathification, too few troops for security).

Presumably, others believe that the notion of a stable, democratic Iraq was never attainable, and the mistakes cited above just made a situation destined to be bad even worse.

But if Sundance film festival winners are promoting the view that Rumsfeld lost the war in May-June 2004, maybe the public will support the notion that the initial invasion and objective made sense.

[Tom Maguire]

Bonus Query - no reaction to the news that the Times sat on the first poll result while they puzzled it out? Why not report the first result with caveats and then re-poll?

Do we all believe that Times would have sat on a poll result that was unexpectedly negative towards Bush until they could carefully double-check it?

[MartyB]

"With no significant evidence of progress in Iraq, why are poll numbers up for whether we made the right decision to invade? "

Uh, couldn't it be because there actually *is* "significant evidence of progress in Iraq" recently?

Everything I've read from people across the political spectrum who are actually witnessing things in Iraq are reporting that there is at least some progress in recent months, probably as a result of "the surge".

MartyB