Pakistanis go to the polls next week, Feb. 18 in an election of great importance for a country where instability can have global repercussions. Just last month, Spanish police arrested 14 suspects in a bomb plot. All were Pakistani or of Pakistani descent, as were the perpetrators of the 2005 London subway bombings, who attended training camps in Pakistan.

The resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan has been possible because they enjoy safe havens in Pakistan's tribal border areas where Islamabad's writ does not run and the Pakistani army no longer ventures after having taken heavy casualties. And, of course, nuclear proliferation was given a huge boost by A.Q. Khan, the father of the Pakistani bomb, who clandestinely passed nuclear technology to Iran, Libya, and North Korea. Although Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf halted those activities, Khan remains a revered figure in his country.

So what is on the minds of Pakistan's citizens as they prepare to vote? Two recent surveys taken in the country, by the International Republican Institute and Terror Free Tomorrow, offer some unexpected insights. Between them they trace a dramatic shift in public opinion over the past six months.

Musharraf's ratings are at rock bottom. The IRI poll has his approval rating at 15 percent, down from 30 percent in earlier polls, while 75 percent want him to resign. At the same time, the TFT poll shows that discontent with Musharraf has not translated into support for extremism, quite the opposite in fact. There has been an upsurge in suicide bombings in Pakistan recently, and perhaps nothing causes a reassessment of terrorist groups as effectively as being a victim of their terrorism.

In any case, if the Taliban were on next week's ballot they would draw 3 percent of the vote, while al-Qaida would manage only 1 percent. Since last August, those with a favorable view of Bin Laden have dropped from 46 percent to 24 percent, while approval of radical Islamist groups in general has fallen from almost 50 percent to less than 25 percent. Most striking, support in the North-West Frontier Province where al-Qaida and the Taliban have their bases has dropped into single figures, with Bin Laden having fallen from 70 percent favorable to 4 percent since August.

The beneficiaries in all this are the two main moderate political parties, the Pakistan People's Party of assassinated Benazir Bhutto, and the Pakistan Muslim League of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. Sixty-two percent say they will now vote for one of these two parties compared with only 39 percent back in August, according to the TFT poll.

Musharraf has presented himself to the United States as the last bastion against extremism. These figures give the lie to that contention. Pakistanis will not turn from a Musharraf government to some form of jihadism. In light of that, the U.S. government should ask itself whether Musharraf is still the horse to back in Pakistan, given his high negatives and the fact that only 9 percent of Pakistanis want to cooperate with the United States in the war on terror.