President Pinocchio is going down.
Most political pundits believe that the final month of the 2004 presidential campaign will center around the war in Iraq. If so, then young men are likely to cast a vote of “no confidence” in George W. Bush. These are the findings of a new Zogby/Williams Identity poll conducted by Zogby Interactive from September 3 through September 7, 2004. The interactive survey was conducted online among 850 males between the ages of eighteen and thirty years old.
The survey reveals that 60 percent disagree with the statement that George W. Bush made the right decision to go war with Iraq. (Only 40 percent think Bush made the correct decision.) These attitudes remain firmly held when other aspects of the war are probed. For example, 63 percent disagree with the claim that Bush made the right decision to go to war, even if the intelligence data were flawed. Strong opposition to the war among the nation’s young men has created a crisis of confidence in the president’s leadership: 59 percent believe President Bush misled the American people from the beginning about the need to go to war with Iraq.
These negative assessments of the Commander-in-Chief are held by all major racial and income groups among the young men surveyed.