WASHINGTON, March 4: Iraq policy is only a low priority for American voters and the mounting civilian casualty toll there is unlikely to damage President George Bush's re-election chances, political analysts and pollsters say.
"If a few hundred or even a few thousand Iraqis get killed, the average American citizen doesn't see that as relevant to them," said University of Iowa political scientist and pollster Arthur Miller.
Most US newspapers ran the news of Tuesday's devastating attacks in Iraq on the front page, but it was overshadowed by the day's top story - Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry's emergence as the Democratic presidential nominee.
American University historian Allan Lichtman commented: "Most Americans have no clue how many Iraqis have died during this war and its aftermath and don't seem anxious to find out. It was the same during the Vietnam War. If it had been 171 Americans killed, you can just imagine the hue and cry there would have been all over the land."
Public opinion polls do show an erosion in support for Bush's Iraq policy, though a majority of voters still appear to back him. A Pew Research Center poll last month found 63 percent of respondents believed the US military effort was going either fairly well or very well, down from 73 percent the previous month.
Fifty five percent thought the operation had contributed to the "war on terrorism" while 32 percent said it had hurt. In mid-December, 59 percent said it had helped and 26 percent thought it had hurt.
IRAQ NOT TOP ISSUE: Pew Research pollster Andrew Kohut said that few Americans gave the Iraqi war top priority in the election campaign. In exit polling in Tuesday's Democratic primaries, only eight percent of voters in Georgia and 10 percent in Ohio named Iraq as the number one issue. Jobs was easily the top priority for these voters, followed by health care.
"The average American watches TV and sees a lot of people have died in what seems to be more fundamentalist violence. It won't move public opinion one way or the other," he said.
Pollster John Zogby said opinions had hardened on both sides of the US debate. The violence made those who were originally opposed to the war more opposed, while those who originally supported it would argue that "this is why we were needed there in the first place."
One factor influencing US opinion will undoubtedly be Kerry's willingness to make Bush's handling of Iraq a major campaign theme. Right now, the Democratic nominee seems more inclined to focus his campaign on domestic issues.
"A case could be made against Bush, linking the deaths to his promises of how the war would promote democracy throughout the Middle East and linking it to the huge amount of money we are spending there," said the University of Iowa's Miller. "But if the candidates don't talk about it, the public won't react and can't react," he said. -Reuters
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