Of course entirely different interpretations are possible. Do you care to share yours, or are you content just bashing mine?

The point was that with the '99 data the situation actually looks worse, because the support that may have been garnered over the 30 years since 1969 has effectively gone away in the six years after '99, leaving the level of those in favor essentially flat (the point in my original post).

I could have said "Yeah, more people used to support Mars, but that doesn't seem to be true anymore." or "All the folks that moved from no opinion to favorable in 1999 have apparently all changed their minds and become opposed instead."

ID noted "It's always a good BS alert when someone leaves out data.", and yet does so immediately after having done exactly the same thing. The 1969 and 1999 data are historical, and only have meaning in this discussion in the context of the June 2005 numbers, which have much more currency then either the 1969 or 1999 data sets.

In 2005 the level of support is essentially the same for putting aside money for a crewed Mars mission as it was in 1969. A wee bit of growth from 39% to 40%. But look at the opposed, from 53% to 58%.

It was up in '99, but so what? That was then, and this is now, and if anything the '99 numbers work against the Mars cause. If we just take the '99 and '05 numbers, in the same way that ID looked at just the '69 and '99 historical numbers, we might get something as follows:

"Following on the incredibly successful accomplishments of the Mars rovers, a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll shows an astonishing 7% drop in support for a manned Mars mission to only 40% of the American taxpaying public from a similar poll in 1999 while NASA was still basking in the glow of the Pathfinder mission and undertaking one of their biennial assaults on the red planet. At the same time, opposition has grown by about the same amount, to 58%, its highest level ever, leading one to wonder what went awry in the last six years. Oppostion is strongest amongst those over 50, and in women, two key taxpaying demographics."
(c) 2005 Lunadyne Newswire

So there was a bump in '99. It's gone, and more people oppose a crewed mission to Mars than ever before. You can't hand wave all that aside, ID, especially when you're not offering any kind of analysis yourself.

I made no mention of delta-V
I made no mention of resources
I made no mention of $1Tn cost estimates
I made no mention of the "" war on terror

These are all bagatelles, and pretty silly ones that are pretty immaterial to the question posed to the public, and their response. Delta-V to Mars is hideous when the time value of money is considered, Mars offers no readily useful resources for anyone but Martians (and the feeble atmosphere is also a disadvantage) [I can see it now, having to ship humus from Earth and regolith from the Moon to Mars just so that they can grow plants], the $1Tn number is ridiculous on the face of it, and our little adventure in Iraq could have pretty nearly paid for a nice 1st Gen SPS.

ID, Don't lecture me on analysis until you can give a respectable analysis of the numbers yourself.