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Citation |
Boussios EG, Cole S. J. Appl. Secur. Res. 2010; 5(3): 279. |
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Copyright |
(Copyright © 2010, Informa - Taylor and Francis Group) |
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DOI |
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PMID |
unavailable |
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Abstract |
This article presents the results of an analysis of public attitudes toward war for the Korean, Vietnam, Persian Gulf, and Iraq wars. In total, 61 surveys conducted by the Gallup Organization starting in August 1950 (near the beginning of the Korean War) and ending February 2006 (middle of the Iraq War) were analyzed. This article examines the social characteristics of those people who are more or less likely to oppose war and is a continuation of our earlier work analyzing the Iraq War. The research reported here was arrived at answering the following question: Are there some groups (e.g., Democrats) who are more likely to oppose war? Using binary logistic regression methods, this research analyzes why some groups are more likely than others to oppose or support war. This cross-sectional analysis studies groups by age, education, gender, race, religion, party identification, and political ideology, in their general likelihood to oppose war. In addition, this analysis studies respondents' attitudes toward war, which includes whether the respondent was a hawk or a dove, an internationalist or isolationist, and optimistic or pessimistic about the war's outcome. Several traditional expectations on war attitudes, including a “race gap” and a “liberal-conservative gap,” were unfounded. In some cases where correlations were found, the relationship could be explained predominately by the correlation of demographic characteristics with partisanship. This study has demonstrated, over time, just how much more powerful party identification has become in the United States. This trend analysis is the closest look at U.S. public opinion on wars after World War II since the ground-breaking and prize-winning work of John Mueller (1973, 1994). |