Iraqi Public Opinion, Then and Now

1. Here are some results from a BBC Poll conducted back in September of 2007:

US surge has failed - Iraqi poll

10 September 2007

About 70% of Iraqis believe security has deteriorated in the area covered by the US military "surge" of the past six months, an opinion poll suggests.
...
Between 67% and 70% of the Iraqis polled believe the surge has hampered conditions for political dialogue, reconstruction and economic development, according to the August 2007 findings.

Only 29% think things will get better in the next year, compared to 64% two years ago.

2. And here are some results from the latest poll:

Iraqis 'more upbeat about future'

16 March 2009

Violence and insecurity are no longer the main concern of most Iraqis, for the first time since the 2003 US-led invasion, an opinion poll suggests.
...
Its findings show striking shifts in opinion since the last poll in March 2008.

On security, 85% of all respondents described the current situation as very good or quite good - up 23% on a year ago

I guess the title of this story could have been "US surge has succeeded - Iraqi poll," but I'm not sure that the BBC readership would appreciate that very much.

Are the Iraqis ready for democracy? Many argued strenuously that they are not. Here is what the Iraqis themselves have to say about it:


I only wish that these pollsters had retained an extremely informative question that they dropped from their survey a while ago. That question asked about life now compared to life under Saddam Hussein. The results from that question were getting worse over time as Iraq descended into sectarian fighting, but, amazingly, the Iraqis never said that life was better under Saddam:


The 2007 results shown here come from a BBC poll conducted in March of 2007 (back when violence in Iraq was still completely out of control), and I've combined the "somewhat better" and "much better" numbers into a single "better" category (same for "worse"). Even then, more people considered life to be better compared to the Hussein era than thought it was worse. That gives you some indication of how bad things really were under Saddam Hussein. If the pollsters asked that question again today, I suspect that the results would be overwhelmingly in favor of life being better today. To many, that might not matter, but to me it does.