Poll Tracker

As Barack Obama gives a speech on Iraq and Afghanistan in Washington this morning, as a prelude to his upcoming trip to both countries, a Washington Post/ABC News poll conducted July 10-13 finds Americans split down the middle between his proposal to withdraw most American troops from Iraq in 16 months and McCain's insistence that events on the ground dictate when troops are withdrawn. Fifty percent of those polled favored a timetable and 49 percent opposed one.

Voters are also closely divided on which man they trust more to handle Iraq. Forty-seven percent say McCain while 45 percent choose Obama and 9 percent are undecided. That difference is within the poll's 3 point margin of error. One area, however, where McCain stands far better than Obama is in who Americans believe would be a better commander-in-chief. Seventy-two percent say it would be McCain as opposed to 25 percent who disagree, while the public is split 48 percent to 48 percent when it comes to measuring Obama against that question. A majority of voters say both men have been clear in articulating their positions.

The sharp division on these questions could trace in part to widespread American opposition to the Iraq war, tempered by the greater faith in McCain's experience.

Americans believe 63 percent to 36 percent that the war in Iraq was not worth fighting; but they do, by a modest 51 percent to 45 percent majority that war in Afghanistan, launched in response to the Sept. 11 2001 terrorist attacks in the U.S., was worth fighting. Obama lately has been trying to make the case that Afghanistan is the key front in the war on terror and that the energies invested in Iraq have hurt that effort.

Rasmussen Reports, in its state-by-state match-ups of the two candidates, has been asking whether voters prefer the next President have the goal of getting the troops home by the end of his first term, or winning the war - and in nearly all cases, "getting the troops home" is the top choice, often by large margins.