The tables for YouGov’s polling on Libya are now up here and here. People broadly approve of David Cameron’s handling of the Libya Crisis so far, with 44% thinking he had done a good job, 35% a poor job. This compares positively to impressions of President Obama’s handling of the issue – only 29% thought he had handled it well, compared to 45% who think he has performed poorly.

Overwhelmingly British people perceive the Libyan people as not supporting Colonel Gaddafi (only 4% of people believe that the Libyan people support their leader), however they are less certain whether they see coalition forces as their allies – 37% think the Libyan people welcome the West’s involvement, 39% think the coalition forces will be seen as enemies of the Libyan people.

There is comparatively little support for the principle of regime change – only 30% of people think that the coalition should be actively attempting to remove Colonel Gaddafi from power, with 56% thinking we should do only what is necessary to protect Libyan civilians.

That said, a majority of people think that it is actually only possible to protect civilians by removing Gaddafi! Only 16% think that it would be possible to come to a deal where Libyan civilians are protected while Gadaffi remains in power, 54% think it would only be possible to protect them by removing Gaddafi. Almost half (46%) of people think that the military coalition should attempt to target Gaddafi himself in air strikes if the opportunity arises, 30% of people disagree.

Many of these questions are copies of ones YouGov asked by in 2003 when the Iraq war broke out – there’s a comparison between then and now by Peter Kellner here