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CNN LIVE AT DAYBREAK

Are More Americans in Favor of Possible War Now?

Aired February 6, 2003 - 06:51   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Well, a question for you. Are more Americans in favor of a possible war with Iraq after Secretary of State Colin Powell's speech at the United Nations?
We want to get some feedback from Gallup's Editor-In-Chief Frank Newport.

Interesting numbers for us this morning, Frank?

FRANK NEWPORT, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, GALLUP POLL: Indeed, Carol.

There's a lot of speculation about the impact of the secretary of state's speech. So we were out last night with a scientific random sample of Americans to see what we could get, at least on this first kind of reaction.

I would say it's muted. No signs of major impact as far as the American public is concerned. But one thing is you can see a lot of Americans, as of last night, hadn't paid a lot of attention to the Powell speech. About four out of 10 on the right hand side had heard nothing about it altogether. Just 21 percent told us at least they had heard a great deal about it.

Now, here's how we measured the impact. We asked Americans where they stood on the possible of military action before the secretary of state's speech and then we said, all right, after the speech where is your position? We can look at the difference between the two.

You can see, using this question formulation, 50 percent said they favored military action before the speech. That moved to 57 percent after the speech.

I don't take that as a major impact. A little movement in the direction that the secretary of state would have wanted, but certainly no signs that a huge number of Americans changed their mind, at least in the short-term, Carol.

COSTELLO: OK. I was just wondering how Americans felt about the case Mr. Powell made as to Saddam Hussein's ties with al Qaeda. Did they buy that?

NEWPORT: Well, that was the least influential of the cases he made among those who said they were familiar. We asked them about four different aspects of it and they, you know, 64 percent said he made a strong case that the Iraqis were hiding evidence, the illegal chemical and biological weapons, 61 percent. But if you look at the bottom there, Carol, just 36 percent said Powell made a strong case for the al Qaeda ties with Iraq.

We have seen that before in beta. That's the one aspect of this that Americans are least likely to tell us that they think has been proven, at least so far. That was borne out by beta last night.

COSTELLO: All right, Frank Newport from Gallup, Many thanks to you.

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