New CNN Poll Finds Strong Majority of Americans Disapprove of US Attack On Iran

CNN released a new poll on Monday showing a strong majority, 59%, of Americans oppose his ongoing military operation against Iran.

The poll conducted by SSRS was conducted between February 28 and March 1 among a representative sample of 1,004 Americans. The poll went into the field almost immediately following the news breaking that Trump had launched a massive airstrike campaign against targets across Iran, which resulted in a fast retaliation from Iran on countries throughout the Middle East, including close U.S. allies Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, Bahrain, and Jordan.

The poll also found that 60% of Americans believe Trump does not have “a clear plan for handling the situation and 62% saying he should get congressional approval for any further military action,” according to a CNN summary of the survey.

Only 27% of those surveyed believed Trump made “enough of an effort at diplomacy before launching the attack, while 39% said the U.S. didn’t do enough to negotiate a peaceful outcome — 33% where unsure.

CNN anchor Dana Bash discussed the poll with her panel on Monday afternoon. “We have a brand-new CNN poll out right now showing high disapproval of President Trump’s strikes on Iran. A brand-new CNN poll found that nearly 6 in 10 Americans disapprove of the airstrikes on Iran, and there are few signs of good news for the president elsewhere in this poll,” Bash began, adding:

59% of Americans say they don’t trust President Trump to make the right decisions on the use of force in Iran. 60% of Americans do not believe the president has a clear plan on how to handle the situation. My panel is back now, or starting now, I should say. We’ve been listening to the president. Tyler, you cover the White House. You’ve been covering this all weekend. Is this data that’s going to surprise the White House?

“I think the White House will largely ignore some of this data, but I think one of the things that we just saw is the president has clearly struggled to outline clear objectives for what he is doing and what measures of success are, and how long this is gonna go,” replied New York Times White House correspondent Tyler Pager. He added:

As Kristen said, this is the first time we’re hearing from the president in a live setting, and I think there are a lot of Americans who woke up Saturday surprised by this operation, surprised that this could go on for weeks, and have a lot of questions about what we’re trying to do here and how will the Americans know when it ends. And I think the president did not provide a lot of clarity there about what the length of this operation looks like. And he also is saying that American troops may be on the ground.

The one thing that I would say, Dana, is I spoke to a lot of the president’s most ardent supporters over the weekend, and they are giving him a long leash. The MAGA base — there’s obviously some high-profile vocal opponents, Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene — but a lot of the rank and file are giving the president some space to operate here, and we’ll see how long that lasts.

“And that also seems to include Republican voters. Let’s look at a little bit more of our poll question about approving the strikes, and this is separated by party. 77% of Republicans say that they approve of it, which is interesting, given the fact that a lot of Republicans voted for the president, thinking that there would not be — okay, maybe not any war, but not, in his words, endless wars. Independents 32, Democrats 18,” continued Bash, adding:

This is something that is really interesting to look at. Let’s put up young voters — the question of whether young voters, 18 to 34-year-olds, support these strikes. 71% say that they disapprove. You know, generationally, usually it’s younger people who don’t like war, and we’ll go back and look through time — it may be not World War II, but since World War II.

Watch above via CNN.

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