Utahns are divided over support for the war in Iraq, especially with the way it is being handled by President Bush, according to a new poll for the Deseret Morning News and KSL-TV.

Just over a majority of Utahns — 53 percent — said they favored the United States going to war in Iraq, with the same number saying they favored the Bush administration's troop "surge," the survey by Dan Jones & Associates found.

And Bush himself ranks slightly lower in the poll, with 51 percent of Utahns approving of his war performance. Forty-seven percent said they disapproved of the president's actions in Iraq.

The poll of 410 Utahns was conducted June 26-28 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 5 percent.

Pollster Dan Jones said support for the war is slipping in Utah, just as it already had in the rest of the country. Now, even some of the president's fellow Republicans in the Senate have broken ranks and are questioning his decision to send some 30,000 troops into Iraq.

"Utah has been one of the states that's backed the president most," Jones said, noting he had measured Bush's war performance in statewide polls conducted earlier in the war at as high as 65 percent.

And three years ago, nearly three-quarters of Utahns polled said they approved of America's involvement in the war. About the same support was measured in the state in 2003, when the invasion was launched.

Why are Utahns less supportive? "One, casualties," Jones said. "Two, they don't see the bombings and the brutal behavior of the enemy being curtailed. It doesn't seem to be that we're making great headway in winning the war."

The latest Utah war casualty was killed in Iraq on Tuesday by small-arms fire. Sgt. Nathan L. Winder, 32, grew up in Blanding after being adopted at age 2 from his native Korea. He was a U.S. Special Forces medic assigned to an airborne unit.

Since the start of the "war on terror" that followed the deadly Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, at least 42 members of the military and others with Utah ties have been killed in Afghanistan and Iraq.

As of Friday, 99 American troops had died in Iraq during the month of June, according to The Associated Press, raising the death toll for the past three months to 329, the highest since the war began in March 2003.

Bush suffered a political setback on June 25, when Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., spoke out against the war in Iraq from the Senate floor. Lugar, who had been a supporter of Bush's war effort, said, "we have overestimated what the military can achieve."

Although Democrats in Congress have spoken out about the president's strategy, calling for a deadline for withdrawing troops, most Republicans have been willing to wait until September to judge the success of the recent buildup.

Jones said he expects to see the administration make some policy changes this fall. But unless there's improvement in the situation in Iraq, Jones said support for the war will slide even more among Utahns.

"If it doesn't get better, yes, it will continue to drop," he said. "The more the casualties go up, the more the probability is that the support will go down."

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