Iraq war referenda, again: A state-wide answer would be "yes"

I've spent a lot time on this already, but two new polls are bringing it up again. Wisconsin's conservatives tried to spin the results of the voting last week on ballot questions in 32 places around the state asking different versions of a question: Should the United States start pulling its troops out of Iraq now? Even though overwhelmingly the answer from voters was yes to those questions, conservatives contorted like Cirque du Soleil to try to pretend the answer was no. They did everything from pretend that places like Madison don't count to trumpeting the opinions of non-voters that, had they voted, could have changed the outcome.

Yet and still, the opposition to these Iraq pullout referenda still largely exists in the conservative bloggers' heads.

Strategic Vision, a generally Republican polling outfit, has a poll out today showing that not only has Bush's approval rating in the state fallen from 38% to 31% since January,

support for a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq has grown, according to the April 7-9 survey of 800 likely Wisconsin voters by Strategic Vision LLC of Atlanta. More than half of those surveyed (55%) supported withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq within six months, while 33% were opposed.

Okay, admittedly, this is a different wording than the referenda questions, which all tended to use right now as a starting point instead of an end-of-2006 timetable like the one Senator Russ Feingold proposed six months ago. But the evidence is clear that voters around the state are much more in favor of bringing the troops home safe sooner than leaving them over there.

The second is the Wisconsin Public Radio/ St. Norbert College poll, which asked,

A number of communities in the state of Wisconsin have placed on their local ballots a question about withdrawing troops from Iraq as soon as possible. If this were on your local ballot, would you vote in favor of withdrawing troops or against withdrawing troops?

In Favor...................................................................... 51%
Against....................................................................... 38%
Wouldn’t vote in local election (vol.)................................ 2%
Not Sure....................................................................... 9%
Refused....................................................................... 1%

While this language also avoids the word now, it also makes it clear what voters across the state actually think about the question and how they would vote were the legislature to offer a state-wide advsiory question on the issue. In fact, among registered voters, the "yes" vote climbs a little to 52%; 50% percent of independents, 47% of third party voters, and even 19% of Republicans are saying "yes" in this poll. (Margins of error are, of course, higher on the sub-groups, but the trend is clear.)

If the state's conservative columnists and talk show hosts and bloggers keep insisting that the vote last week was meaningless and not reflective of reality, they are lying to you, trying to spin the unspinnable. But, you know, I guess that shouldn't be surprising, either.