Following President Obama’s announcement that Osama bin Laden had been killed, Americans’ attitudes toward the Afghan war — and the war on terror in general — have undergone a sharp turnaround, according to a new poll.
In a Survey USA poll conducted on Monday, a plurality of Americans now say the Afghan war has been worth fighting. That reverses months of rising opposition to the war, when polls showed that record-low levels of Americans thought the war had not been worth it in the long run. The new survey also found that, with bin Laden’s death, six in ten Americans now think America is winning the broader war on terror.
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According to the poll, 45% of adults think the war has been worth fighting, compared to 37% who said it has not. That finding comes less than two months removed from a Washington Post/ABC News poll in which nearly two-thirds of Americans thought the war had not been worth fighting, while just 31% said the opposite, both record highs.
The poll also found that 60% of Americans think the U.S. is now winning the war on terror, while 18% believe terrorists are winning. When Survey USA asked the same question five years ago, 41% said the U.S. was winning, while a 45% plurality said otherwise.
President Obama did not get much of an approval bump in the poll. A 46% plurality of respondents said they approved of his job performance, compared to 42% who disapproved. That’s slightly better than the TPM Poll Average, which pegs Obama’s approval at 44.9% compared, with an additional 44.9% of Americans disapproving of his job performance.
The Survey USA poll was conducted May 2 among 1,000 adults nationwide. It has a 3.2% margin of error.
