Iraq, Terror Outweigh Economy, Jobs in Election, Pew Poll Says

Aug. 18 (Bloomberg) -- For the first time since the Vietnam era, national security issues are larger concerns than the economy and jobs for U.S. voters, according to a report by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.

``We see deep divisions and conflicting sentiments within the public,'' said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Center, which conducted three polls of 4,500 adults in July and August to survey U.S. foreign policy attitudes for the Council on Foreign Relations.

War, foreign policy and terrorism were identified as the most important problem facing the nation by 41 percent of survey respondents, compared with 26 percent who listed the economy and 26 percent who named other domestic U.S. issues. The results suggest public opinion on Iraq may be the decisive factor in the Nov. 2 election between President George W. Bush and Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, Kohut said.

The results from polls taken July 8-18, July 30-Aug. 12 and Aug. 5-10 are 95 percent accurate within plus-or-minus 2.5 percentage points, Pew said.

Foreign policy and security concerns dominated U.S. elections from 1948 to 1972, peaking during the Vietnam War when national security outweighed economic concerns 9 to 1, according to an analysis of Gallup Poll data by the Pew Center. After the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam, voters in 1976 focused more on the economy in a trend that peaked with the end of the Cold War.

In 1992 voters who were more concerned 18 to 1 about the economy elected Democrat Bill Clinton president, according to the Pew analysis of Gallup data.

Voters More Divided

Americans are more divided along partisan lines ahead of November's presidential election, with Republicans and Democrats holding divergent views on the proper U.S. role in the world and the U.S. occupation of Iraq.

``The debate about whether it is better to be loved or feared is shaping up as a major issue in this campaign,'' said Lee Feinstein, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

A 56 percent majority of Democrats said an international loss of respect for the U.S. is a big problem, while only 22 percent of Republicans agreed respect is an issue.

``The most important finding that comes out of this survey is continuing concerns about Iraq,'' Kohut said, concerns the Pew report said are ``ambivalent and nuanced.''

Support for the war in Iraq has been in decline even as a majority of 53 percent continues to believe Bush made the right decision to go war in Iraq, down from 74 percent who held the same view during the U.S. assault in March and April 2003.

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