CNN poll: U.S. support for Iraq war falls to 31 percent

CNN
Dec. 20, 2006

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Fewer than a third of Americans still support the war in Iraq, and more than half say they want U.S. troops out of the country within a year, according to a CNN poll released Monday.

Support for the conflict fell to a new low of 31 percent in the poll, conducted Friday through Sunday by Opinion Research Corporation, while a record 67 percent expressed opposition to the nearly 4-year-old war.

Nearly three-quarters said Bush administration policy needs a complete overhaul or major changes. But only 11 percent of those polled backed calls to send more American troops to Iraq, as President Bush is said to be considering.

Pollsters interviewed 1,019 adults for the survey, which had a sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

But only 32 percent of those questioned in Monday's poll said they would support keeping U.S. troops in Iraq "as long as necessary" to hand over control to a new Iraqi government. By comparison, 21 percent said they wanted to see Americans leave immediately, and 33 percent said they wanted to see a U.S. withdrawal within a year.

Despite that opposition to a continued conflict, a solid majority -- 59 percent -- said they opposed any move by Congress to end the war by cutting off spending for the U.S. deployment.

But the views of those polled are increasingly pessimistic about the outcome of the war, which has cost nearly 3,000 American lives since the March 2003 invasion that toppled Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

Half of those polled -- an even 50 percent -- said the war was likely to end in a stalemate. The same number said victory was no longer possible.

Forty-eight percent said an American victory remained a possibility -- but only 27 percent said it was the most likely outcome, while 20 percent said a U.S. defeat was most likely. Only 34 percent said defeat was impossible.

Full poll results













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