Senior Citizens Least Likely to Think U.S. Will Succeed in Iraq

Senior Citizens Least Confident Will US achieve its goals in Iraq?
	Will succeed	Will fail	Don't know
Age	%	%	%
18-29	53	45	2
30-49	51	45	4
50-64	43	48	9
65+	36	47	7

Feb. 20, 2007 - Public support and confidence for the war in Iraq continues to decline and it is senior citizens that are far more pessimistic about the prospects than younger Americans, according to recent poll by the Pew Research Center.

Overall, public opinion is divided over the prospects for Iraq, with just as many predicting success (47%) as failure (46%). This is a stark slide in optimism overall in recent months. In September, the prevailing view (by a 57% to 35%) margin, was that the U.S. would succeed in achieving its goals in Iraq.

Younger Americans express greater confidence about prospects for success in Iraq than do older people. A slim majority of those under age 50 (52%) predict success in Iraq, compared with just 36% of people age 65 and older.

This is a dramatic shift from January of last year, when a Harris Poll found senior citizens the most likely to think the Iraq war was going well.

Seniors are no more likely than people in other age categories to predict that America will fail in Iraq. Instead, they simply express greater uncertainty - many refuse to even hazard a guess as to how things might turn out.

Support for the war in Iraq continues to decline, as a growing number of political independents are turning against the war. Overall, a 53% majority of Americans believe the U.S. should bring its troops home as soon as possible - up five points in the past month and the highest percentage favoring a troop pullout since the war began nearly four years ago.

The latest nationwide survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, conducted Feb. 7-11 among 1,509 Americans, paints a bleak picture of public opinion about the war. Fully two-thirds of Americans (67%) say things are not going well with the U.S. military effort in Iraq, and solid majorities say the U.S. is losing ground in preventing a civil war (68%), reducing civilian casualties (66%), and defeating the insurgents militarily (55%).

In recent surveys, independents had been fairly evenly split over whether to bring the troops home. In January, 47% favored a troop withdrawal while 49% said the troops should remain in Iraq until the situation there is stabilized. But in the current survey, 55% of independents say they favor bringing the troops home as soon as possible, compared with 40% who believe the troops should remain.