Americans are conflicted on withdrawing troops from Afghanistan

Washington, DC, August 18, 2021 - A recent Ipsos poll for Reuters conducted on Monday, August 16, finds that 50% of all Americans support sending troops back into Afghanistan to fight the Taliban, and 73% support America evacuating Afghans who helped US forces, to the United States. However, 61% also support the United States completing its withdrawal of troops on schedule. This contradiction is indicative of the uncertainty surrounding this situation. It appears that while Americans want to help the Afghan people now scrambling to escape from under Taliban rule (75% support America sending in additional troops to secure key facilities (airports, embassies, bases) until the withdrawal is complete), they also feel that this situation was inevitable (68% agree that the war in Afghanistan was going to end badly, no matter when the U.S. left). 

When it comes to American involvement in Afghanistan, 77% of Americans believe the U.S. military has generally done a good job, while only 44% think the Biden administration has, and 44% think the American news media has done a bad job. 

For more details on this poll and the ongoing situation in Afghanistan, you can visit the Reuters post here: https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN2FI26L 

About the Study

These are some of the findings of an Ipsos poll for Reuters, conducted on August 16, 2021. For this survey, a sample of 1,000 Americans age 18+ from the continental U.S., Alaska, and Hawaii were interviewed online in English. The sample includes 443 Democrats, 247 Republicans, and 310 independents. Weighting was then employed to balance demographics to ensure that the sample's composition reflects that of the adult population according to Census data and to provide results intended to approximate the sample universe. The precision of Ipsos online polls is measured using a credibility interval. In this case, the poll is accurate to within ± 3.5 percentage points, 19 times out of 20, had all Americans been polled. The credibility interval will be wider among subsets of the population. All sample surveys and polls may be subject to other sources of error, including but not limited to coverage error and measurement error. The poll also has a credibility interval of ± 5.3 percentage points for Democrats, ± 7.1 percentage points for Republicans, and ± 6.3 percentage points for independents.  

For more information on this news release, please contact:

Chris Jackson
Senior Vice President, US
Public Affairs
+1 202 420-2025
[email protected]

Kate Silverstein
Media Relations, US
Public Affairs
+1 718 755-8829
[email protected]

About Ipsos

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Our passionately curious research professionals, analysts, and scientists have built unique multi-specialist capabilities that provide true understanding and powerful insights into the actions, opinions, and motivations of citizens, consumers, patients, customers, or employees. We serve more than 5,000 clients across the world with 75 business solutions.

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