Turns Out There Was Polling During WWII

TONY SNOW TRIED to make a critical point last weekend by suggesting on one of the Sunday morning talk shows that it's the media that is causing people to be so nervous about Iraq. How can we win in Iraq, the argument goes, if the American people are only hearing about the bad news? "If somebody had taken a poll in the Battle of the Bulge, I dare say people would have said, 'Wow, my goodness, what are we doing here?', Snow said.

Well guess what? Turns out there were several extensive polls taken right about the time of the Battle of the Bulge. Hadley Cantil had a poll that showed 'no downtick in public support for the war during the battle of the Bulge.' Al Kamen at WaPo has details about a Gallup poll taken in 1944-45:

In fact, there was a poll taken by Gallup from Dec. 31, 1944, to Jan. 4, 1945 -- three years into that war and right in the middle of the bloody Battle of the Bulge, where U.S. casualties were estimated between 70,000 and 80,000. It found that 73 percent of Americans would refuse to make peace with Adolf Hitler if he offered it and that 86 percent of Americans thought there was no chance that we would lose the war in Europe.

Oops. Again.