Majority in North Carolina wants troops home

(Raleigh) News & Observer

Nearly two of three North Carolinians disapprove of the way President Bush is handling the war in Iraq, according to a new poll from Elon University.

The 65 percent disapproval rating is down slightly from April, when 70 percent said they were unhappy with Bush’s management of the conflict.

The poll was conducted Sept. 24-27 by the Elon University Institute for Politics and Public Affairs. It surveyed 664 North Carolina residents, and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.9 percent.

The increase in support for the president’s handling of the war coincides with a small increase in the number of people who approve of the president’s overall job performance, Elon pollsters said.

Of those surveyed, 38 percent either approve or strongly approve of Bush’s performance, compared with a 36 percent approval rating in an April poll by Elon. Among other findings:

- 67 percent support a timetable to withdraw some U.S. troops from Iraq by the beginning of 2009, and 64 percent said that they would support a timetable to withdraw some troops by the summer of 2008.

- About 50 percent said the war with Iraq was not worth fighting, with 53 percent saying the United States should no longer be in Iraq.

- 41 percent think that the war has made the nation less safe from terrorism, down from 50 percent five months earlier. 37 percent said they believe the nation is safer, and 15 percent said it is about the same.

- 56 percent felt the nation is more at risk for terrorist attacks, another drop from April, when the figure stood at 61 percent.

“The war in Iraq continues to burden the Bush administration — citizens are unhappy with the war and apparently becoming more disenchanted with the prospects of it ending anytime soon,” Hunter Bacot, director of the Elon University Poll, said in a news release.

“More telling is that a majority of people now believe we should not be there and two-thirds want to see troops start coming home by the beginning of next year. Such findings in a ‘military friendly’ state point to the potential political costs this issue poses for both this administration and the Republican Party over the next year.”