Poll: Majority Favors Withdrawal; Minority Favors Petraeus Plan
October 4, 2007 -- 11:27 AM EST // //

In recent days Kevin Drum and others have been wondering aloud about a batch of recent polls that suggest some confusion as to what pace of withdrawal from Iraq the public wants. As Drum noted, a recent Washington Post poll found that nearly 70 percent want war funding reduced -- but at the same time, a majority says that the Bush/Petraeus plan to return troop counts to pre-surge levels by next summer is about right or too quick a withdrawal.

So what gives here? Why are majorities saying they want relatively rapid withdrawal while also showing support for the Bush plan, which doesn't accomplish withdrawal? Which does the public want?

Now we have a new poll that, for the first time, helps us really answer this question: A new Gallup poll released this week. The key to this poll is that, rather than ask about rapid withdrawal and Petraeus' plan separately, the survey actually asks the public which of the two they prefer in a head-to-head matchup. Here's the key result:

If you had to choose, which plan would you say you favor -- reducing troop levels to 130,000 by next summer and not committing to further reductions until that time, (or) withdrawing most U.S. troops from Iraq within nine months' time?

Reducing troop levels and not committing to further reductions: 44%

Withdrawing most troops within 9 months' time: 53%

When offered a direct choice between the Bush/Petraeus plan and rapid withdrawal in nine months, a clear majority chooses the latter, and a minority chooses the former.

So how to explain some of the undeniably confusing and self-contradictory numbers in some of these other polls, then? Why the degree of support for the B/P plan when it's at odds with the public's clear demand for a withdrawal timetable?

Gallup says that the reason for this is that people want withdrawal but aren't super fussy about the pace of it, and will settle for the withdrawal of the "surge" troops for now. I'd like to suggest another related possibility: The explanation lies in way the questions have been asked about the B/P plan.

These surveys have tended to offer folks three choices: (a) B/P; (b) withdrawal more quickly than B/P; and (c) withdrawal more slowly than B/P. The quicker and slower options are not at all specific, while the B/P one is. So, when they're not offered a specific withdrawal option, lower-than-expected numbers go for the nonspecific faster withdrawal plan and some shift over to the specific plan on the table, which does have a troop reduction in it -- i.e., B/P. Then when they're offered specific plans for more rapid withdrawal later in the same surveys, they support them in sizable majorities.

After all, the bottom line is that in the above Gallup survey voters were offered a choice between the specific B/P plan and a specific plan for more rapid withdrawal -- and a majority picked more rapid withdrawal while a minority picked B/P. In other words, the public still wants out, and when given the option to say so, they do just that.

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