This is a little belated, but I was a little troubled by a post on Kevin Drum’s blog at the Washington Monthly.  The substance of the post is about interpretations of certain poll results:

A recent New York Times poll showed that 65% of respondents want to withdraw either some or all of our troops from Iraq. Hooray! The country is with us! But then the Times asked a followup question: “What if removing troops meant Iraq would become more of a base of operations for terrorists, then would you still favor removing U.S. troops from Iraq, or not?” Guess what? Of that 65%, only 30% still favored removal… The odds are that in real life — i.e., during a campaign in which voters were responding to actual arguments instead of casually answering poll questions over a telephone — there’s something like 30% who want to stay in Iraq, 30% who want to get out, and 40% somewhere in the middle who aren’t really sure what to do.

I’m not sure that’s how I would interpret the second poll question which, the more I think about it, seems to be so completely leading a question as to be meaningless.  To put it in some perspective, let’s imagine a similar pair of questions which are more personally related to a respondent’s life:

Q1: Suppose your newborn son is diagnosed with a congenital heart defect (which will reduce quality of life and potentially lead to death).  Would you opt to have surgery to repair the damage?

Q2: Suppose you know for certain that complications from the surgery will result in your son’s death.  Would you still opt to have the surgery performed?

Presumably nearly 100% of respondents would respond ‘yes’ to the first question.  Similarly, most respondents would probably respond ‘no’ to the second question.  The problem here is that the first question asks the respondent something meaningful, but the second question basically asks a question that has only one answer.   Of course if you know the surgery will be fatal you won’t have it done!  This question doesn’t really tell you anything about the respondents’ views of the risks involved.  Similarly, letting Iraq for certain become a terrorist base would of course be out of the question.

Kevin Drum interprets this response as indicating that many people just aren’t sure about Iraq withdrawal.  There’s an implicit assumption that those 40% of people whose answer changes just haven’t thought about what withdrawal might lead to.  This may be true for some people, but isn’t it just as likely that they’re answering an extremely leading hypothetical question the only way it can be answered?

In other words, these people may very well think, “I would hate to leave Iraq as a terrorist haven but I personally don’t think that’s what will happen.”

It seems a more meaningful follow up question for the withdrawal question is:

In the event of a U.S. withdrawal, do you think Iraq becoming more of a terrorist haven is: (a) likely, (b) unlikely, (c) unsure?

Kevin’s overall argument is true, though I agree for different reasons: one shouldn’t put too much faith in poll results.