Young Voters Support Democrats and the War in Iraq (?)

Matt Singer is the CEO of Forward Montana, a home-grown non-profit that trains, mobilizes, and elects new progressive leaders in Montana. This isn't his assigned guest-posting topic, but he can't help himself.

The New York Times has a new poll of young voters available. The poll was done in partnership with CBS and MTV.

Some of the news is wholly unsurprising. Young voters "are more likely than the general public to favor a government-run universal health care insurance system, an open-door policy on immigration and the legalization of gay marriage." In other words, we're all a bunch of dirty, f*cking hippies.

Until you read the next sentence: "The poll also found that they are more likely to say the war in Iraq is heading to a successful conclusion."

wHa?!?!?

Here are the numbers:

But when it came to the war, young Americans were more optimistic about the outcome than was the population as whole. Fifty-one percent said the United States was very or somewhat likely to succeed in Iraq, compared with 45 percent among all adults. Contrary to conventional wisdom, younger Americans have historically been more likely than the population as a whole to be supportive of what a president is doing in a time of war, as they were in Korea and Vietnam, polls have shown.

Now, unless I'm missing something, the second half of that paragraph is unsubstantiated. The first half doesn't say young Americans support the war. It says they're optimistic about the end result.

And 51% versus 45% -- that could possibly be statistical noise.

Why am I so concerned about this poll finding? I'm not -- although I would find it a bit scary if my generation was clamoring for a new LBJ-style experiment of pretending there's no tradeoff between butter (domestic spending) and guns (war spending). National health care and perpetual war? That's spendy.

But the main reason I'm perplexed is that the numbers don't appear to jive with what I've seen elsewhere. The New Progressive Institute recently released a report on the Millenial Generation that noted:

In 2004 Pew data, only 29 percent of 18-25 year old Millennials believed that “using overwhelming force is the best way to defeat terrorism,” compared to 67 percent who thought “relying too much on military force leads to hatred and more terrorism.” By contrast those 26 and over were much more closely split (41-49). In addition, 62 percent of 18-25 year olds believe the US should take into account the interests of its allies even if it means making compromises with them, compared to 52 percent of their elders. And in November, 2004 Democracy Corps polling, 57 percent of 18-29 year olds (note: only the 18-26 year olds in this group qualify as Millennials) believed that America’s security depends on building strong ties with other nations, compared to just 37 percent who believed that, “bottom line,” America’s security depends on its own military strength. This was the most pro-multilateralist sentiment of any age group.

[...]

Millennial 18-25 year olds are now most hostile to the war in Iraq and to Bush’s handling of it. In 2006 Pew polls, an average of 26 percent of this age group approved of Bush’s handling of the Iraq war, compared to 69 percent who disapproved. In the 2006 exit polls, 62 percent of 18-29 year old voters disapproved of Bush’s handling of Iraq, including 43 percent who strongly disapproved and 65 percent—more than any other age group—thought the US should start withdrawing troops from Iraq. In addition, a majority of those voters did not think the Iraq war had improved the long-term security of the United States. Similarly, in an April, 2005 GQR poll of 18-25 year olds, 63 percent of this age group thought the war in Iraq wasn’t worth the costs and 64 percent thought the Iraq war wasn’t part of the war on terrorism.

Granted, NPI is evaluating mostly 18-25 year-olds while the NYT is evaluating 18-29 year-olds. We're comparing apples to half-apples (for reading comprehension's sake, don't think through that metaphor too carefully).

So young voters disapprove of the handling of the war, don't think it is improving our security, it wasn't worth the costs, and that it has nothing to do with fighting terrorism, but they're optimistic about the end-game. That's what I call a sunny disposition.

Anyone want to try to cut this Gordian knot?