Posted on 10/29/2007 6:48:53 PM PDT by West Coast Conservative
A majority of likely voters 52% would support a U.S. military strike to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon, and 53% believe it is likely that the U.S. will be involved in a military strike against Iran before the next presidential election, a new Zogby America telephone poll shows.
The survey results come at a time of increasing U.S. scrutiny of Iran. According to reports from the Associated Press, earlier this month Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice accused Iran of "lying" about the aim of its nuclear program and Vice President Dick Cheney has raised the prospect of "serious consequences" if the U.S. were to discover Iran was attempting to devolop a nuclear weapon. Last week, the Bush administration also announced new sanctions against Iran.
Democrats (63%) are most likely to believe a U.S. military strike against Iran could take place in the relatively near future, but independents (51%) and Republicans (44%) are less likely to agree. Republicans, however, are much more likely to be supportive of a strike (71%), than Democrats (41%) or independents (44%). Younger likely voters are more likely than those who are older to say a strike is likely to happen before the election and women (58%) are more likely than men (48%) to say the same but there is little difference in support for a U.S. strike against Iran among these groups.
When asked which presidential candidate would be best equipped to deal with Iran regardless of whether or not they expected the U.S. to attack Iran 21% would most like to see New York U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton leading the country, while 15% would prefer former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani and 14% would want Arizona U.S. Sen. John McCain in charge. Another 10% said Illinois Sen. Barack Obama would be best equipped to deal with Iran, while Republican Fred Thompson (5%), Democrat John Edwards (4%) and Republican Mitt Romney (3%) were less likely to be viewed as the best leaders to help the U.S. deal with Iran. The telephone poll of 1,028 likely voters nationwide was conducted Oct. 24-27, 2007 and carries a margin of error of +/- 3.1 percentage points.
Clinton leads strongly among Democrats on the issue, with 35% saying she is best equipped to deal with Iran, while 17% would prefer Obama and 7% view John Edwards as the best choice. Giuliani is the top choice of Republicans (28%), followed by McCain (21%) and Fred Thompson (9%). One in five independents chose Clinton (21%) over McCain (16%) and Giuliani (11%). Clinton was the top choice among women (24%), while 14% would be more confident with Giuliani in the White House and 11% would prefer McCain. Men slightly prefer McCain (18%) to Clinton (17%) on this issue, while 15% said Giuliani is best equipped to deal with Iran. The survey also shows there is a significant amount of uncertainty if any of the long list of declared candidates would be best equipped to deal the Iran 19% overall said they werent sure which candidate to choose.
There is considerable division about when a strike on Iran should take place if at all. Twenty-eight percent believe the U.S. should wait to strike until after the next president is in office while 23% would favor a strike before the end of President Bushs term. Another 29% said the U.S. should not attack Iran, and 20% were unsure. The view that Iran should not be attacked by the U.S. is strongest among Democrats (37%) and independents, but fewer than half as many Republicans (15%) feel the same. But Republicans are also more likely to be uncertain on the issue (28%).
As the possibility the U.S. may strike Iran captures headlines around the world, many have given thought to the possibility of an attack at home. Two in three (68%) believe it is likely that the U.S. will suffer another significant terrorist attack on U.S. soil comparable to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 of those, 27% believe such an attack is very likely. Nearly one in three (31%) believe the next significant attack will occur between one and three years from now, 22% said they believe the next attack is between three and five years away, and 15% said they dont think the U.S. will be attacked on U.S. soil for at least five years or longer. Just 9% believe a significant terrorist attack will take place in the U.S. before the next presidential election.
“It means polls are crap.”
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Polls are NOT crap. Questions filled with crap are not good polls.
RealClearPolitics puts out an objective, credible poll; that’s why the MSM doesn’t pick it up and report it.
>> 52% are complete idiots.
Then it might be true that the majority of likely voters think you are as well.
Nobody called me for this poll, so I’m not saying you’re a complete idiot or an incomplete idiot.
The War on Terror continues to THE central issue of 2008, which is why Hillary will lose.
Thanks for posting, but I think this poll is not important whether accurate or not. This president doesn’t take or avoid military action based on polls.
We should just withdraw from Iraq & the problem will go away
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points to tagline
LOL! That’s a good one.
I’ll take two of the white puffy ones in the bottom left hand corner and three of the Chinese lanterns with the donut for a hat, directly above - many thanks.
Zogby should have acknowledged that if Hillary! is elected President, we simply wonât have a Military in this country. I canât think of anyone who would stick around after their signed commitment if she were to become CIC.
I believe that an attack on Iran is coming and will happen before the election.
Listening to Glenn on the radio yesterday...he gave credible reasons why he believes that.
We wore another same shirt, I'm trying to find it. Everybody had one. That was our internet in the 70s, t-shirts.
BUUUUUUUUUUMMMMMMMPPPPPPPP !!!!!!!!!!
HAHAHA that’s great.
If I wore that to school these days I’d probably be given a disciplinary referral and sent home to change.
Hey PC crowd!
(makes the finger)
No matter how hard Zogby tried to skew the poll, 52% of Americans still favour a strike on Iran.
More like 75%-85% IMHO ........................ FRegards
48% of the people in this country are partisan fools? Or maybe 48% of the people realize that the nation can’t even fight a war in Iraq without it becoming a national crisis, so how are we going to fight a much more difficult war in Iran?
“the operation would be competely quickly”
That ain’t gonna happen. If you really want to stop their nuke program, you’ve got to take out all of their several hundred installations. Even if we put boots on the ground, it would probably be another year before we could say with confidence that we had found them all.
You might be able to delay their program for a few years using a quick strike, but that’s not a solution.
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