The data, then, show that perceptions of Iraqi links to al-Qaeda and possession of WMDs differed substantially by party affiliation. A sizeable number of Republicans continued to differ from Independents and, especially, Democrats as to these ostensibly important facts about Iraq and justifications for supporting the war. What about these subgroups' opinions regarding the decision to go to war, after the fact?
As shown in Figure 4, when the question was asked, "Do you believe that what we have told by the U.S. government before the Iraq war about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and Iraq's links to al-Qaeda, the terrorist organization, was generally accurate or misleading?" a very large majority of Republicans (around 77 percent) consistently responded that the government did give accurate information (78 percent in June 2003 and 75 percent in April 2004), whereas the proportion of Democrats who believed this fell from 30 percent on June 2003 to below 20 percent in early 2004. Thus, as of April 2004, we find an almost fourfold difference in the perceptions of Republicans versus Democrats that the government might have misled the public. Again, Independents fell in between and closer to the Democrats in their responses.
In two of the polls conducted in June and August 2003, respondents were also asked the related question, "If it turns out that Iraq had no significant weapons of mass destruction and there was no strong link to al-Qaeda, would you think we were told the truth by the U.S. government or that we were misled?" Given the results shown in Figure 4, it is not surprising to find that a consistent majority of Republicans in both polls, 64 percent, continued to believe the government had told the truth, as opposed to 31 percent of Democrats in June, dropping to 20 percent in August. Indeed, more than three times the percentage of Republicans than of Democrats believed what they were told by the president.
In February 2004, Harris also asked whether the intelligence given before the war to President Bush by the CIA and others about Iraq's WMDs was accurate. Approximately 75 percent of Republicans said that the intelligence was accurate (7 percent "completely" and 68 percent "somewhat accurate"), compared to 34 percent of Democrats (4 percent "completely" and 30 percent "somewhat accurate"), with Independents falling in between, with just over 50 percent perceiving the intelligence as accurate. Harris asked the same question again two months later, in April 2004, and found close to the same results (71 percent of Republicans, 39 percent of Democrats, and 52 percent of Independents believed the intelligence was accurate).
Finally, the March 2005 ABC News poll brought us closer to the present with similar results: Fully 86 percent of Republicans, compared to only 32 percent of Democrats, felt that in making its case for war with Iraq, the Bush administration told the American public what it believed to be true.
Support for the war in Iraq and the reasons for going to war were and continue to be heavily imbedded in partisan politics and partisan conflict in American politics. For this reason, what we see in the data is strikingly consistent with arguments about "cognitive balance" in social psychology. For example, John Zaller in his 1992 book, The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion, theorized about political predispositions and partisan resistance-where individuals may refuse to internalize new dominant messages that they recognize as inconsistent with their underlying predispositions. This has apparently been the case for many Republicans regarding Iraq. According to Zaller, the attitudes of different segments of the public will change in different ways, depending on their political awareness, political values, and changes in the available information. The partisan differences in perceptions, and changes in perceptions, that we have described here are consistent with this view.
While our findings are consistent with Zaller's empirical arguments, they would seem to challenge his normative view of how elite competition produces effective leadership that we would want to call "democratic." As Benjamin Page and Robert Shapiro emphasized in 1992, however, even what they would call the opinions of a "rational public" can be manipulated and deceived. In the case described here it is possible that initial press coverage after September 11 contributed to misperceptions about Saddam Hussein and the terrorist threat against the United States, that the Bush administration then latched onto fully. Barton Gelman and Walter Pincus, for example, have pointed out that the government misled the public as to what was known, in particular, about WMDs. But while we may be uncertain as to the original source of the public's misperceptions, the data presented here suggest that one set of leaders-in this case those of the Bush administration-can substantially control what its partisan supporters, and to some extent others, perceive as the relevant facts concerning a national policy decision of the highest order.
Yaeli Bloch-Elkon is senior instructor/assistant professor in the Department of Political Science-Communications Program, at Bar Ilan University, and is currently a visiting scholar at Columbia University. Robert Y. Shapiro is a professor in the Department of Political Science and Institute for Social and Economic Research, Columbia University, and currently a visiting fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. The authors would like to thank Gary Langer, director of polling at ABC News, and Steven Kull, director of the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA), for survey reports and helpful discussions, and Jane Weintrop of Columbia University's Electronic Data Service for her assistance.
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