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Only one in three Americans support the five-month-old war with Iran, while 69% say U.S. President Donald Trump has not clearly explained the goals of U.S. military involvement, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted Friday through Sunday.
Support for the conflict is at its lowest level in the survey since the war’s early days. The poll also showed Trump’s approval rating rising 3 percentage points from last month to 37%, after previously matching the lowest level of his presidency.
Trump has offered several objectives for the conflict, including helping Iranians remove their leaders, eliminating Iran’s ballistic missile capabilities and preventing Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
The survey found that four in 10 Republicans were among those who believed Trump had not clearly explained the purpose of the U.S. military involvement.
White House spokeswoman Olivia Wales said Trump would not base his decisions on “fluid opinion polls” and repeated his determination to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.
“What matters most to the American people is having a commander in chief who takes bold action to keep them safe,” Wales said.
Approval of the conflict has remained below 40% since the U.S. and Israel launched strikes against Iran on Feb. 28.
That level of public backing is significantly lower than support during the early months of other recent U.S. wars, although each conflict took place under different circumstances.
About 70% of Americans supported the Iraq War during its opening months. Roughly 90% backed the Afghanistan War in its early days, according to Gallup polling.
The Iraq War lasted from 2003 to 2011, while the Afghanistan War continued from 2001 to 2021.
Public opposition to the war is placing pressure on Trump and the Republican Party ahead of the November midterm elections, when Republicans will seek to defend narrow majorities in the U.S. Congress.
“It’s not clear why we started a war with them. I have no idea,” said Alex Womack, a retired turbine repair specialist from Stockbridge, Georgia.
Womack, who served in the U.S. Marine Corps during the 1991 Gulf War, said he became a Republican partly because he approved of how Republican President George H.W. Bush handled that conflict.
He said his support for Trump had declined because of the Iran war.
“I don’t think he’s doing very well, personally,” Womack said.
Eighteen U.S. soldiers have died in the conflict so far, while thousands of people have been killed in Iran and Lebanon, where Iran-allied fighters have fought Israeli forces.
The war has also sharply increased gasoline prices, placing additional pressure on Americans’ finances.
Nationwide gasoline prices are averaging just over $4 per gallon, compared with about $3 per gallon shortly before the conflict began Feb. 28.
“This puts pressure on the party in a myriad of ways, all of them bad,” said Alex Conant, a Republican political strategist who served as a White House spokesman during George W. Bush’s presidency.
“The White House officials have been saying since January that they need to win economic arguments,” Conant said. “It’s hard to win the economic arguments when you’re clearly focused on foreign policy.”
Independent registered voters surveyed by Reuters/Ipsos favored Democratic congressional candidates over Republican candidates by 36% to 20%.
The poll also found that independent voters preferred Democrats over Republicans on economic policy.
Trump campaigned during the 2024 presidential election on a promise to keep the U.S. out of prolonged conflicts.
He initially estimated that the Iran war would last four to five weeks and has rejected comparisons with other conflicts, including the Vietnam War.
The Vietnam War lasted two decades and killed more than 58,000 U.S. soldiers.
Rhyan Anderson, an independent voter from Fairburn, Georgia, who supported Trump in 2024, said the president should focus on domestic problems rather than assisting Israel or other allies.
“My biggest thing is just focus on the people who are actually in the country,” said Anderson, who works two jobs in security and data collection.
“I know we have allies and things like that, but there’s a lot of people here that really need help,” he said.
Anderson said he voted for Democrat Joe Biden in 2020.
Reuters/Ipsos has asked respondents since mid-March whether they support or oppose military strikes against Iran.
At that time, 37% said they supported the war.
On the day the conflict began, 27% said they supported it. That version of the survey also allowed respondents to select “unsure,” an option chosen by 29%.
The latest nationwide online Reuters/Ipsos poll gathered responses from 1,246 U.S. adults and had a margin of error of about 3 percentage points in either direction.
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