Many regard the 2004 presidential election as being fundamentally about terrorism and national security. This is especially true among those who support George W. Bush and that makes it all the more strange that Bush supporters are far less likely than Kerry supporters to know the facts of the Iraq situation or even know Bush's position on various issues.

The Program on International Policy Attitudes reports:

Even after the final report of Charles Duelfer to Congress saying that Iraq did not have a significant WMD program, 72% of Bush supporters continue to believe that Iraq had actual WMD (47%) or a major program for developing them (25%). Fifty-six percent assume that most experts believe Iraq had actual WMD and 57% also assume, incorrectly, that Duelfer concluded Iraq had at least a major WMD program. Kerry supporters hold opposite beliefs on all these points.

Similarly, 75% of Bush supporters continue to believe that Iraq was providing substantial support to al Qaeda, and 63% believe that clear evidence of this support has been found. Sixty percent of Bush supporters assume that this is also the conclusion of most experts, and 55% assume, incorrectly, that this was the conclusion of the 9/11 Commission. Here again, large majorities of Kerry supporters have exactly opposite perceptions.

It is presumably true that Kerry supporters have mistaken beliefs about other matters, but they are far less likely than Bush supporters to have mistaken notions about where their preferred candidate stands - Josh Marshall has a nice chart that maps the various responses. Why has this happened?

Asked whether the US should have gone to war with Iraq if US intelligence had concluded that Iraq was not making WMD or providing support to al Qaeda, 58% of Bush supporters said the US should not have, and 61% assume that in this case the President would not have. Kull continues, "To support the president and to accept that he took the US to war based on mistaken assumptions likely creates substantial cognitive dissonance, and leads Bush supporters to suppress awareness of unsettling information about prewar Iraq."

"The roots of the Bush supporters' resistance to information," according to Steven Kull, "very likely lie in the traumatic experience of 9/11 and equally in the near pitch-perfect leadership that President Bush showed in its immediate wake. This appears to have created a powerful bond between Bush and his supporters--and an idealized image of the President that makes it difficult for his supporters to imagine that he could have made incorrect judgments before the war, that world public opinion could be critical of his policies or that the President could hold foreign policy positions that are at odds with his supporters."

I certainly see a similar resistance to reality among some Bush supporters here on this site. Cognitive dissonance is a powerful factor in the ability of religious people to hold on to their beliefs regardless of the existence of evidence that contradicts them. Obviously it can have a similar influence in politics.

Read More:

• 2004 Elections
• Election Polls
• George W. Bush
• John Kerry
• War on Terrorism