The Democrats' War Mandate

What Are They Going to Do About It?

Brian Doherty | December 4, 2006

I predicted back in Reason’s August-September issue that public dissatisfaction with the war was not apt to be a major factor in the results of November’s election. Everyone seems to agree I was wrong. The standard story of the election has it that the Democrats were propelled to control of both houses of Congress to a very large degree over their opposition to Bush’s steadfast stay-the-course path.

p class="MsoNormal"> o:p> /o:p>This set of CNN exit poll results seems to tell the story unambiguously—as we keep hearing, Iraq was “extremely” or “very” important to 67 percent of the electorate, 56 percent of them disapprove of the war in Iraq, and 55 percent think we should withdraw some or all troops from the baby quagmire. /p> p class="MsoNormal"> o:p> /o:p>The standard narrative seems to imply that concern over/dissatisfaction with the Iraq mess means you voted Democratic, the opposition party. But the data tells a slightly more complicated story than that. That same CNN exit poll, with over 13,000 respondents, shows that of the voters who considered Iraq “extremely important” in their vote, 39 percent went Republican. Even more interestingly, of the almost equal percentage of voters who thought the war “very important” (32 to “extremely”’s 35), a majority went Republican—52 percent. Similar, though not as drastic, complications arise from viewing the Democrat/Republican breakdown of those who want to see some or all troops leave Iraq—24 percent of that vote went GOP. /p> p class="MsoNormal"> o:p> /o:p>However, if we agree to agree—with some of those complications noted—that dissatisfaction with the occupation of Iraq won the Democrats’ the lovely gift of Congress, two other questions remain: were antiwar voters right in assuming—assuming they did--that the Democratic Party stood unambiguously