War polls vs. President polls

LA Times:

Democrats have an overwhelmingly favorable view of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, but she would be soundly beaten if she ran for president against Republican Sen. John McCain now, a new Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll has found.

Underscoring the New York Democrat's potential vulnerability, the poll also found that Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, a Republican little known to most voters, would give Clinton a run for her money.

Given a choice between McCain and Clinton, half of those surveyed said they would vote for the Arizona Republican, compared with 36% for the former first lady. In a matchup with Romney, the poll indicated Clinton would win by just 6 percentage points, 42% to 36%.

Those findings lend credence to some Democrats' fear that despite Clinton's strength within the party, she is too polarizing a figure to win the White House.

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Lets get this straight. We are being told that the war is so unpopular and that only about a third of voters now support it, but when it comes to a Presidential election poll we are told that John McCain who wants to send more troops to Iraq and wants to win the war would defeat the Democrat's top candidate by 14 points? I think this goes to prove my point that the pollsters are asking the wrong question. Questions about satisfaction capture negative responses from both those who want to win and those who want to lose. The question should be, "Do you want to lose the war in Iraq?" Until they ask that question they will continue to get a misleading answer on the public attitude toward the war.