The majority of Americans disapprove of the strikes that President Donald Trump ordered against Iran over the weekend, early polling shows.
Only 27% of Americans approved of the U.S.-Israeli bombing of Iran, while 43% disapproved, according to a new poll by Reuters/Ipsos conducted over the weekend, before news that six U.S. soldiers have been killed in Iranian retaliatory attacks. And it’s not the only poll.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]The U.S. and Israel’s military operations against Iran come just months before the U.S. midterm elections and could prove to be a key issue, especially as the President, who promised peace in his presidential campaign and claims to have ended eight wars, has signaled the campaign could go on for weeks and may even involve American boots on the ground.
“Trump promised to end wars,” Democrats on the House Foreign Affairs Committee posted on X on Monday. “He’s now started more wars than any president in modern American history. Instead of affordable healthcare and groceries, the American people get to foot the billion-dollar tabs for Trump’s foreign wars of choice.”
Since entering office last January, Trump has ordered military strikes against seven countries—more than any other modern-era U.S. President. The U.S. and Israeli assassination of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is also the second recent example of the Trump Administration orchestrating foreign regime change, following the U.S. arrest and extradition of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in January.
Trump appeared to shrug off the apparent unpopularity of his moves. In an interview with the New York Post on Monday, he said, “I think that the polling is very good, but I don’t care about polling. I have to do the right thing. I have to do the right thing. This should have been done a long time ago.”
“Look, whether polling is low or not, I think the polling is probably fine. But it’s not a question of polling. You cannot let Iran, who’s a nation that has been run by crazy people, have a nuclear weapon,” Trump continued. “I think people are very impressed with what is happening, actually. … I think it’s a silent—if you did a real poll, the silent poll—and it’s like a silent majority.”
Partisan divide
Around 59% of Americans don’t approve of Trump’s decision to strike Iran, according to a CNN poll conducted by SSRS, while roughly 41% of poll respondents said they approved of the move.
But the CNN poll also revealed that Americans are sharply split across party lines. More than 80% of Democrats said they disapproved of the strikes, whereas only 23% of Republicans said they disapproved. The CNN poll surveyed more than 1,000 respondents over text message over the weekend. Less than 20% of Democrats said they supported the military action,whereas 77% of Republicans expressed their support for the decision. Of the poll respondents who identified as independent, 68% disapproved of the strikes, compared to 32% who approved.
That partisan divide was reflected in other polls, too. Journalists at the Washington Post, who texted more than 1,000 Americans on Sunday to ask them how they felt about the strikes, found that 81% of Republicans supported the military action, whereas only 9% of Democrats did. Just 12% of Republicans said they opposed the attack, whereas 87% of Democrats expressed their disapproval of the strikes. Among independents, 28% supported the attack, while 59% opposed it.
The Post found that, overall, 52% of respondents disapproved of Trump’s decision to launch the attack, compared to 39% who supported the move and 9% who said they weren’t sure how they felt about it.
Differences are evident on the streets too. In Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, Denver, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, New York City, and other cities, Americans have come out to protest the war, even as others have rallied to celebrate the death of Khamenei.
