Blair and Bush: Not so polls apart

This week a series of polls on both sides of the Atlantic have produced results that ought to worry both men. Voters no longer trust their joint project to reshape the Middle East, already struggling in Iraq and now threatened by a wider regional conflagration.

Up to a point this isn't new, of course - support for Iraq in both countries has been dropping steadily ever since it became clear the quick invasion did not, after, all, mean the job was done.

But opinion against them is hardening. In Britain, the Guardian polled voters last weekend on a series of foreign policy questions. The Iraq war - which just after Saddam's fall had the support of 63% of British voters - is now backed by just 36%, a post-war low.

That's still higher than the share of voters prepared to back Labour - 35% this week - and suggests there is still a dogged core of voters prepared to stick with Mr Blair. He has the support of almost half of Labour voters for the war: critics have drifted off to the opposition Liberal Democrats or the Conservatives.

The remarkable thing is that US voters seem to think almost exactly the same way: a New York Times poll found supporters of the war outnumbered by opponents 63-30%. The question was different to the Guardian's one in Britain, but the result virtually the same.

A second poll in the Wall Street Journal, worded differently, found 58% of voters are losing confidence in Iraq, against 32% who remain optimistic about the outcome. Again, the anti-war message is clear.

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http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/julian_glover/2006/07/two_countries_one_view.html