The Zogby Poll finds George W. Bush is a trifle unpopular with a mere approval rating of 29%, but Congress is doing so much worse at 11% that one almost expects to see angry peasants with torches and pitchforks attacking the Capitol.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad probably has a higher public approval rating in the United States than the Reid/Pelosi Congress.

Daily Kos cites a poll of 1461 Iraqis taken by a “respected British marketing research firm” which proves the US is responsible for the violent deaths of more than a million Iraqis so far.

And Ray Drake, at Davids Medienkritik, cites German media reports of numbers of US anti-war demonstrators.

ARD Tagesschau, SZ and SPIEGEL ONLINE – “4,000 to 6,000” anti-war demonstrators
ZDF and Die Zeit – “About 10,000” anti-war demonstrators
TAZ – “Tens-of-thousands” of anti-war demonstrators
Die Welt – “50,000 anti-war demonstrators”
Die Presse (Austrian media site) – “Around 100,000 Americans marched against the war…”

Do I hear 200,000? 500,000? 1,000,000 anti-war demonstrators? Going once – going twice – sold!

Allahpundit is probably making too much out of all this. Rather than showing anything really substantive about democrats, this Zogby Poll probably merely demonstrates the insufficiently-often-recognized ability of the people commissioning polls to produce the results they desire by how they frame the questions.

Second edition of Iowahawk’s incarceree beauty contest.

Via Maggie’s Farm.

George W. Bush has a low approval rating, the latest Zogby Poll reports:

66 percent said Bush had done only a fair or poor job as president, with 34 percent ranking his performance as excellent or good.

But Congressional approval ratings have cratered, setting an all-time record low:

83 percent said Congress was doing a fair or poor job, just 14 percent rated it excellent or good.

The latest Gallup Poll finds

Congress Approval Down to 29%; Bush Approval Steady at 33%

David Broder, in today’s Washington Post, claims the left has a mandate for defeat, surrender, and withdrawal.

The gap between public opinion and Washington reality has rarely been wider than on the issue of the Iraq war. A clear national mandate is being blocked — for now — by constraints that make sense only in the short-term calculus of politics in this capital city.

The public verdict on the war is plain. Large majorities have come to believe that it was a mistake to go in, and equally large majorities want to begin the process of getting out. That is what the polls say; it is what the mail to Capitol Hill says; and it is what voters signaled when they put the Democrats back into control of Congress in November. …

The question that naturally arises is why the strongly expressed judgment of the people — responding to news of increasing American casualties in a seemingly intractable sectarian conflict — cannot be translated into action in Washington. …

One way or another, public opinion ultimately will be heeded on the war in Iraq. It is hard to imagine the Republicans going into the presidential election of 2008 with 150,000 American troops still taking heavy casualties in Iraq.

It’s true that the democrats won control of Congress last November, but many other issues and factors besides the war, and a number of Republican scandals, undoubtedly also played a role in that election’s results. The democrats gained a very narrow Congressional majority, and can hardly be described as possessing a mandate to do anything other than avoid taking bribes and molesting pages.

Which mandate alone should represent a more than adequate challenge, requiring all the moral resolve and political will the democrat party can possibly muster, if not more.

One hears the claim a lot these days that public opinion thinks this, and public opinion demands that, as if opinion polls conducted by news organizations represented some sort of meaningful, objective, binding, and official process. This sort of claim represents the grossest sort of attempt by journalists to usurp political authority.

The poll Mr. Broder cites in his own editorial was conducted by two notoriously biased news organizations, the Washington Post and ABC News. And its results are based on the responses of a mere 1082 adults, including an intentional “oversample of African-Americans.”

Opinion polls of 1000 or so of the people willing to talk to pollsters on the phone prove basically nothing. Opinion polls are typically artfully crafted. The questions they contain steer answers in the direction their creators desire.

That WaPo/ABC poll, which Broder cited, asked:

Do you think (the United States should keep its military forces in Iraq until civil order is restored there, even if that means continued U.S. military casualties); OR, do you think (the United States should withdraw its military forces from Iraq in order to avoid further U.S. military casualties, even if that means civil order is not restored there)?

But if I asked instead:

Do you think (the United States should abandon the civilian population of Iraq to Islamic Fundamentalism and sectarian violence, if that means destroying our future credibility in the eyes of both our friends and our adversaries abroad): OR, do you think (the United States should keep its word and implant stable and democratic government in Iraq, even at the cost of US military casualties)?

the poll results would be quite different.

Mr. Broder’s polls never can produce anything resembling a mandate. They only represent propaganda, typically created by dishonest and dishonorable advocates.

The only opinion polls which count occur officially and in November. The last election was inconclusive, as are the war’s current results.

Members of the left and its allies in the punditocracy looking for a mandate for surrender, withdrawal, and defeat need to look for it in the results of the 2008 election, and stop claiming that they already possess it.

James Lileks reports surprising evidence of vertebrate life in Europe.

As surveys go, its results were rather surprising: A majority of Europeans would support deterring Iran’s nuclear program by military force. It’s not quite as drastic as Quakers demanding plowshares be converted to swords, but it’s close.

We’re not looking at a large, clamorous, martial majority, though — 52 percent approved of military action. Eight percent had no opinion, possibly because they were busy packing for the state-mandated three-month vacation and didn’t want to be bothered.

Forty percent disagreed that Iran should be deterred by military means, and frankly, that seems low. The European spirit, bled white by two ghastly, self-inflicted bloodbaths, has settled into the warm, milky bath of passive decline. One gets the sense that most Europeans would disapprove of military action to fight off alien invaders. Hey, everyone has a colonial phase. Who are we to point fingers, let alone guns?

Read the whole thing.

The poll was conducted by the think tank Open Europe.

And was reported here, in Macedonia. Somehow I missed reading about this one in the Times or Post.

Right Wing News emailed more than 240 right-of-center bloggers and asked them to answer 8 questions. The results below were based on 63 responses.

We here at NYM were not invited to participate, but we won’t let that stop us.

1) Do you think the surge should go forward?

Yes (61) — 97%
No (2) — 3%

Yes

2) Do you think that a majority of Democrats in Congress would like to see us lose in Iraq for political reasons?

Yes (53)– 84%
No (10) — 16%

Yes

3) Do you believe that the wall on the border will ever actually be completed?

Yes (6) — 10%
No (56) — 90%

No

4) Do you think mankind is the primary cause of global warming?

Yes (0) — 0%
No (59) — 100%

No

On the following four questions, bloggers were asked to select one of the options presented (because some bloggers skipped particular questions, gave answers that weren’t listed, or gave answers that were difficult to categorize, there are not 63 responses to every question.)

5) Illegal Immigration.

A) Would you prefer an illegal immigration bill that tackled border security and enforcement issues only? (46) — 77%

B) Would you prefer a comprehensive bill that tackled border security and enforcement issues, created a legal status for the people who are here illegally, created a guest worker program, and increased the number of foreigners allowed to become American citizens? (14) — 23%

B – I disagree with much of the Right on illegal immigration. I think the problem is with the fact that we have immigration laws and policies which conflict with our labor needs, so we don’t really want to enforce them. We want cheap labor which is not available domestically, but we also don’t want to let those foreigners in. It’s just the usual American “wanting it both ways” problem.

6) Which of the following Democratic candidates do you think would be the toughest opponent for a Republican candidate in 2008?

A) Hillary Clinton (38) — 63%

B) John Edwards (9) — 15%

C) Barack Obama (13) — 22%

A – Not that I think Hillary is all that tough to beat, if we only had a worthwhile candidate ourselves.

7) If you were grading George Bush on his foreign policy for his presidency so far, would you give him an:

A or B (35) — 56%
C (18) — 29%
D, E, or F (10) — 16%

D – Did not invade Syria or Iran. Failed to democratize Iraq properly by a serious occupation over a significant period of time before granting any form of home rule. Has not invaded Venezuela or Cuba.

8 ) If you were grading George Bush on his domestic policy for his presidency so far, would you give him an:

A or B (17) — 27%
C (26) — 41%
D, E, or F (20) — 32%

C- – His tax cuts were good but not great, but he certainly did manage to turn the economy around very quickly. He is guilty, however, of the devastatingly disastrous failure to put the country on a wartime footing, and to prosecute domestic activities undermining National Security, the war effort, and American morale, thus losing public support.

And have been recently been equating some opinion polls showing high percentages of opposition to the War in Iraq with an electoral mandate.

Let’s see how they like this poll by Public Opinion Strategies (POS).

reported by New Media Journal:

57% of those polled agreed with the statement, “I support finishing the job in Iraq, that is, keeping the troops there until the Iraqi government can maintain control and provide security for their people.”..

57% of those polled believed that Iraq was central to the War on Terrorism and our struggle against global Islamofascist aggression…

53% believe the Democrats are going too far in pressing the president to withdraw troops.

56% believe that even if they harbor concerns about the president’s policies that Americans should stand behind the president in Iraq because we are at war.

59% believe that it would hurt American prestige more to pull out of Iraq immediately than it would to stay there for the long term, until the job was finished successfully.

and the New York Post:

53 percent to 43 percent… believe victory in Iraq over the insurgents is still possible…

Only 25 percent of those surveyed agreed with the statement, “I don’t really care what happens in Iraq after the U.S. leaves, I just want the troops brought home.” Seventy-four percent disagreed…

When given a choice of four policies, an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops was the least popular (17 percent).