Survey Finds Most Americans Do Not Support War in Iraq

A new poll from MPO Research Group finds that support for the war is waning since it started a decade ago.

Washington, DC (I-Newswire) March 5, 2013 - After ten years of war in Iraq, MPO Research Group asked Americans how these feel about the war and if their opinion has changed over the past decade. About a third of Americans (32.7%) claim to have never supported the war in Iraq while 57% say that they supported the effort in the war’s early stages. Of the initial supporters, 66.3% (37.8% of the total population) still support the war, while 33.7% (19.2% of the total population) now feel it was the wrong thing to do. 10.2% are not sure how they feel.

Gender

Men are more supportive of the war than women (42.4% compared to 33.4%), and women are more likely to have opposed the war from the beginning (37% compared to 28.1%). An equal amount of men and women have changed their minds about the war over time: 19% of men and 19.5% of women supported the war at first but now think it was the wrong thing to do.

Age

Younger Americans are the most likely to have supported the war at its onset and are also the most likely to still support it. 50.8% of respondents 18-19 and 40.2% of respondents 20-29 supported the war from the beginning and still think it was the right thing to do.

Older groups are the least likely to have supported the war consistently: 33.5% aged 50-59 and 35.7% aged 60+ have supported the war since the beginning. 22% of respondents 60+ supported the war at first, but now think it was the wrong thing to do.

Respondents in their forties and fifties are the most likely to say they never supported the war. 46.2% 40-49 and 41% 50-59 were apposed to the war since the beginning.

Ethnicity

Caucasians are the most supportive of the war in Iraq: 44.3% have supported the military effort from the beginning. 15.7% supported the war but now think it was the wrong course of action. 39.5% of African Americans have supported the war from the start, as have 15.8% of Hispanics and 19.8% of Asian Americans.

Over a third of both African Americans (37.4%) and Hispanics (37.7%) opposed the war from the beginning. In addition, 32.4% of Hispanics and 10% of African Americans supported the war at first but have come to think it was the wrong thing to do. 31.3% of Caucasians and 26.6% of Asians never supported the war.

Asian Americans are the most likely to have changed their minds about the war over the past ten years: 49.3% say they supported it in the beginning but now say it was the wrong thing to do.

Education

The most educated respondents are the most likely to have been opposed to the war since the beginning. 47.4% of respondents with a post-graduate degree and 40.8% with a bachelor’s degree have been consistently opposed to the war. 26.7% with a community college education and 18.1% with a high school education have always been opposed to the war.

Respondents with high school and community college educations are more likely to have changed their stance on the war (23.6% with a high school education and 28.6% with community college supported the war at the start but now think it was the wrong thing to do, compared to 11.7% with bachelor’s degrees and 11% with post-graduate degrees), while consistent support is fairly equal across education levels: 43.2% with a high school education, 34.9% with community college, 38.2% with a bachelor’s degree and 36.1% with a post-graduate degree.

Surveys are conducted by MPO from a national panel of over 5,000 randomly selected individuals in the United States, accurately reflecting all backgrounds in terms of age, education, ethnicity, gender and political affiliation. MPO is a self-funded, independent and non-partisan research and news organization. News stories from its monthly research surveys can be found on www.mpopost.com.

For Media inquiries, please email media@mpopost.com or call +1 202 621 0212. For more information on MPO Research Group, please visit www.mpopost.com