Even as U.S. President Donald Trump hails the recent U.S. attack on Venezuela and ousting of the country’s president as “amazing,” new polling suggests that Americans remain deeply divided over the move.
Prior to last weekend’s operation, polling suggested that Americans were largely against any U.S. military action in Venezuela. A Quinnipiac University poll in December, for example, found that about 63 percent of respondents expressed opposition, while a whopping 70 percent said the same in a CBS News/YouGov survey from November.
Even as U.S. President Donald Trump hails the recent U.S. attack on Venezuela and ousting of the country’s president as “amazing,” new polling suggests that Americans remain deeply divided over the move.
Prior to last weekend’s operation, polling suggested that Americans were largely against any U.S. military action in Venezuela. A Quinnipiac University poll in December, for example, found that about 63 percent of respondents expressed opposition, while a whopping 70 percent said the same in a CBS News/YouGov survey from November.
But Americans are more evenly split in their approval and disapproval of this weekend’s developments, according to new polling published by Reuters/Ipsos on Monday. The poll, which was conducted on Jan. 4 and 5 and surveyed more than 1,200 adults nationwide, offers an illuminating look into how the American public views the controversial military operation that has come to dominate much of the world’s attention.
World leaders, it turns out, aren’t the only ones with mixed reactions to the U.S. attack. The poll’s findings suggest that the American public also harbors a wide range of views, with no one reaction clearly on top. What is clear, however, is a wariness that the White House will become too deeply mired in Venezuela’s domestic affairs.
“They don’t want to get too involved. They don’t want U.S. troops in Venezuela,” said Alec Tyson, a lead pollster and senior vice president at Ipsos Public Affairs, which conducted the polling.
“That presents really a narrow path here for the administration, where Americans are open to—or perhaps hoping for—some positive outcomes, but they’re very cautious about getting too involved,” he added.
That challenge is reflected in the data: 33 percent of the survey’s respondents approved of the U.S. military action, almost evenly matching the 34 percent of respondents who disapproved. There’s also a deep sense of uncertainty; 32 percent of people said they were not sure how to feel.
Public sentiment is even more sharply fractured along partisan lines. Nearly two-thirds of Republicans, for example, backed Trump’s operation. The same amount of Democrats opposed it.
The poll suggests that there is slight optimism that the White House’s ousting of Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro will potentially benefit that country’s stability, quality of life, and fairness of elections. Yet these sentiments, too, were divided along partisan lines; while Republicans were largely bullish about the military operation’s impacts, Democrats were far more dubious.
And across the board, the bigger fear appears to be whether the Trump administration’s operation will more permanently entangle the United States in Venezuelan affairs, alongside concerns about resulting financial costs and risks to the lives of U.S. military personnel.
Nearly three-quarters of respondents expressed worries that the United States would get “too involved” in Venezuelan affairs. That sentiment is shared by 90 percent of Democratic and more than half of Republican respondents.
“It’s clear that the public wants limited—and I really emphasize limited—engagement there,” Tyson said.
The sentiments captured in this Reuters/Ipsos survey largely echo the findings of a recent Washington Post poll, which also found that Americans are almost evenly split on their reactions to the military operation. The Post reported that 40 percent of respondents approved of the attack, compared with 42 percent who disapproved and 18 percent who were unsure.
That survey also suggested that Americans broadly would not support any U.S. efforts to take control of Venezuela, as Trump has previously suggested doing: 45 percent of respondents said they would oppose such an action, while 30 percent said they weren’t sure. Only about one-quarter of respondents would back that effort.
In one of the poll’s starkest findings, the overwhelming majority of respondents—or 94 percent—said they believed the Venezuelan people should determine the future leadership of the country.
