I’m running this again because I find it so amazing that less than 40% of Bush supporters actually understand what his position is on fundimental foreign policy issues.
Candidates’ Foreign Policy Positions:
[…]Majorities of Bush supporters misperceive his positions on a range of foreign policy issues. In particular they assume he supports multilateral approaches and addressing global warming when he has taken strong contrary positions on issues such as the International Criminal court and the Kyoto Agreement. A majority of Kerry supporters have accurate perceptions of Kerry positions on the same issues.
[…]In all these cases, there is a recurring theme: majorities of Bush supporters favor these positions, and they infer that Bush favors them as well. For example, in PIPA’s September 8 – 12 poll 54% of Bush supporters favored participation in Kyoto, 66% favored participation in the land mines treaty, and 68% favored a treaty prohibiting testing nuclear weapons (CTBT). Apparently in the absence of evidence to the contrary, Bush supporters assume Bush feels as they do.
[…]Kerry supporters were much more accurate in assessing their candidate’s positions on all these
issues.
I’ll ask again… You Bush supporters: What is this??? Instead of checking to see what your candidate’s views actually are, you simply assume they believe what you believe because… why? You like the guy? You think he’s the same religion? He’s the same political party and daddy always voted that way? What???
Here’s the table again showing the percentage of supporters of each candidate who correctly understood their candidate’s position on various foreign policy issues. Red=Bush, Blue=Kerry:
| Issue | Bush’s position | Bush Supporters Correctly perceiving Bush position | Kerry’s position | Kerry Supporters Correctly Perceiving Kerry Position |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Labor & Environmental standards in trade agreements | Opposes | 13 % | Supports | 81 % |
| Participation in land mines treaty | Opposes | 20 % | Supports | 79 % |
| Participation in a treaty that bans the testing of nuclear weapons | Opposes | 24 % | Supports | 77 % |
| Participation in the International Criminal Court | Opposes | 38 % | Supports * | 65 % |
| Participation in Kyoto agreement on global warming | Opposes | 39 % | Supports * | 74 % |
| Building a missile defense system | Build now | 47 % | Research only | 68 % |
| Defense spending | Expand | 57 % | Keep same | 43 % |
| Who should take the lead in Iraq on writing a new Constitution and building a democratic government | US | 70 % | UN | 88 % |
| * Supports in principle but wants to negotiate terms for US involvement | ||||
How scary this is? In most cases less than 40% of Bush supporters know what his position is. In only two cases, defense spending and the new Iraqi government, do more than half know. On the other hand, in most cases better than 75% of Kerry supporters know what his position is. Only once (defense spending) does it fall below 50%, and even then it’s better than the majority of the Bush supporters.
You can see my write-up on the whole report from the University Of Maryland here. In many cases Bush supporters are living in fantasy land. Unfortunately reality may come crashing down rather quickly if Shrub wins the election.
