New polling shows Iraq impact on Senate races

Tom Curry National affairs writer • Profile • E-mail

WASHINGTON - Despite the cliché often heard from candidates — “elections are about the future” — one could make a persuasive case that elections usually are about the past: who’s to blame for getting the country into a particular crisis or scandal, such as the Depression, the Korean War, or the Watergate episode. And, they are about the present: how voters size up their interests and grievances at the moment they enter the polling place on Election Day.

The MSNBC/McClatchy opinion poll data on eight Senate contests released Tuesday morning, and compiled by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research, shows one constant: the Iraq war ranks higher in significance than any other single issue when poll respondents are presented with a menu of issues.

To no one’s surprise, opposition to the Bush administration Iraq policy in any given state correlates with the Democratic candidate leading his or her Republican opponent.

In Rhode Island, for example, nearly four out of five respondents told Mason-Dixon that they disapproved of the Bush administration’s policies in Iraq. Democratic Senate candidate Sheldon Whitehouse leads Republican Sen. Lincoln Chafee, 48 percent to 43 percent, with nine percent undecided. The poll’s margin of error is plus or minus four percentage points, so Whitehouse’s lead is far from certain.

Democrat ahead of anti-war Republican
But Whitehouse has his lead despite Chafee’s outspoken and sometimes bitter opposition to President Bush on Iraq. Chafee was also the only Republican senator to vote against the October 2002 resolution giving Bush legal authority to use military force in Iraq. Even this, apparently, is not opposition enough for many Rhode Island voters.

In Pennsylvania, 60 percent of those polled disapprove of the Bush Iraq policy and Democratic challenger Bob Casey Jr. leads Sen. Rick Santorum by a robust 12 percentage points.

Likewise in Washington state, nearly two-thirds of voters reject the Bush Iraq policy and the incumbent Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell leads her GOP challenger, Mike McGavick, by 15 points.

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Another noteworthy poll finding: Americans remain divided about what President Bush ought to do about Iraq. There’s no consensus other than unhappiness with the current state of things there and the lack of a definitive victory.

In some states the Mason-Dixon polls found respondents almost precisely split among five different policy options.

In Tennessee, the sample of registered voters found an electorate evenly divided with about one-fifth supporting each of these options: send more troops to Iraq, keep the same number as now deployed there, withdraw some U.S. troops, withdraw all of them, or “not sure.”

In the Tennessee Senate race, Democratic candidate Harold Ford Jr. trails Republican Bob Corker by two percentage points, which means the race is statistically tied.

Unusually specific on Iraq
Unlike many Democratic candidates this year, Ford has offered a specific proposal on Iraq: divide the country into three autonomous sections, Sunni, Shia, and Kurd.

“Give each regional autonomy and help to create a central government with authority over the borders and the ability to divide the oil revenue up equitably,” Ford said in his Oct. 10 debate with Corker.

“Things are not going well in Iraq and we do need to look at new strategy,” Corker said in that debate. He called for some undefined middle course.

Corker praised former Secretary of State James Baker for “bringing people together to really break down this discussion that’s either a ‘cut and run’ strategy or a ‘stay the course’ strategy. Somewhere in between, we’ve got to figure out new ways of solving the problems that we have in Iraq,” he said.

He seemed to admit that he did not know exactly where that “somewhere in between” was located.