Poll: McCain The Better Candidate Against Terrorism

July 15, 2008 12:57 p.m. EST

Washington, D.C. (AHN) - Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) would make a better Commander-in-chief than Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL), a new Washington Post/ABC poll said on Tuesday.

Seventy-two percent of voters nationwide view McCain as the better candidate to fight terrorism, while 48 percent say Obama has good national security credentials. When voters were asked who they trusted more to handle the war in Iraq regardless of who they officially supported, 47 percent chose McCain and 45 percent chose Obama.

The presumptive Republican nominee's lead is despite other findings by the poll, such as 63 percent of voters saying "the war was not worth fighting for" and 60 percent saying that winning in Iraq is not necessary for the United States to succeed in its overall fight against terrorism.

Voters were essentially evenly divided between the two candidates' stance on the war, with 49 percent expressing support for McCain's opposition to a timetable for troop withdrawal and 50 percent choosing Obama's proposal to remove troops within 16 months.

Obama has not suffered significant backlash from recent allegations that he had changed his position on the war. The poll found that 56 percent of voters think the freshman senator's stance has been clear, and 38 percent said it has been unclear. The numbers are almost equal to McCain's respective 60 percent and 34 percent.

The Washington Post/ABC survey was conducted July 10-13 among 1,119 adults. Its margin of error is 3 percent.