U.S. Public Opinion and the Widening Mideast War

The public’s view of President Trump’s decision to launch a campaign of aerial bombardment against Iran is being portrayed as mostly negative, although the answers depend partly on the precise question being asked – and which pollster is doing the asking.

The Reuters/Ipsos poll, which is consistently among the most negative regarding Trump, reports that just one in four Americans back the U.S. attack. On the other hand, the Trafalgar Group, an outlier in its bullishness for the president, has another set of findings. The only poll in the RealClearPolitics Poll Average giving Trump a positive job approval rating, Trafalgar reports that 54% of voters support Trump’s handling of the war. Note that those are different questions.

Meanwhile, the headlines in the press are almost uniformly unenthusiastic: “Majority of Voters Disapprove of How Trump has Handed Iran” (NBC); “Trump’s War in Iran Polls Badly, but Will it Hurt Republicans in 2026?” (USA Today); “59% of Americans Oppose the Military Action in Iran” (New York Times).

At the same time, numerous media outlets have made much of a supposed schism within Trump’s Make America Great Again coalition as they feature stories about “MAGA’s divide” (Axios), “MAGA Infighting” (Newsweek); and “MAGA’s Base Balks at War…” (NPR).

It’s certainly true that several of the nation’s most prominent Trump-supporting commentators have expressed deep misgivings about the decision to attack Iran. These range from measured doubts raised by Matt Walsh to the “kooky” rantings – Trump’s word – of Tucker Carlson. (In response, Carlson told the Free Press, “I’m a little kooky. I’ll concede that.”)

In a conversation with ABC White House correspondent Jonathan Karl, Trump weighed in on this debate himself Thursday. Referring to Carlson and Megyn Kelly, who has also expressed opposition to the war in Iran, the president said, “I think that MAGA is Trump – MAGA’s not the other two.”

Is he right? For now, the president’s loyalists can point to the public opinion polls to bolster Trump’s claim. Almost every survey shows solid support for Trump – and the Iran bombing – among registered Republicans and his MAGA base. This president has higher support within his own political party than George W. Bush or Barack Obama registered at this point in their second terms.

Be that as it may, two dynamics are worth weighing when assessing the strength or weakness of Trump’s political position.

The first is that disenchantment from those who previously supported this president doesn’t come out of nowhere. In 2016 and 2024, Donald Trump ran for president while promising to end or avoid what he called “forever wars.” Moreover, his second time around, Trump chose a vice president and a defense secretary who were also outspoken in their non-interventionist views.

Second, it’s clear that the most important factor regarding Americans’ support for this military venture is how long it lasts. Bruce Stokes of the German Marshall Fund compiled a deck of the polling on Iraq and sent it around Thursday. One panel is quite instructive. It came from a YouGov poll done for CBS News that asked voters about their support of the Iran war based on a single factor – its duration.

If the mission lasts “days or weeks” 76% of those polled approved of it, with only 24% opposed. Support shifted markedly when the timeline was changed to “months” with 54% opposing and 46% approving. Asked for their views if the war would last “years,” it hardly mattered whether respondents were Republicans, Democrats, independents, pro-MAGA, or Never-Trumpers: Only 13% supported it, with 87% opposed. Time, in other words, is not on the president’s side.