Public increasingly hawkish on terror threat

May 05, 2015, 2:10 PM GMT+0

Americans tend to be more worried about terrorism and most now think America is safer confronting terrorist groups and their supporters abroad

Americans like drone attacks – as long as they are strikes on high-level terrorism subjects. They have at least some trust in the President to make the right decisions on when to order those strikes. And a significant number of Republicans, most of whom don’t trust the President’s judgment on sending drones, think there should be even more use of drones.

In the latest Economist/YouGov Poll, Americans have moved away from the position they took just a year and a half ago, when a majority believed that the United States would be safer from terrorism is it stayed out of other countries affairs. Now, things have changed, and the public is more likely to believe the U.S. is safer if it confronts countries and groups that promote terrorism – a belief they held five years ago.

There have been several prominent terrorist attacks in the West in the last year and a half, including two in the city of Paris – one on a satirical magazine and the other in a kosher supermarket – and the trial of the Boston Marathon suspect has just begun.

The choice to confront terrorist threats is especially popular among Republicans. 80% of them believe the country would be safer if the U.S. confronted countries and groups that supported terrorism. 60% of Democrats disagree.

The U.S. has been aggressively using drone strikes on foreign targets as a means of combatting terrorism. Although support drops dramatically when Americans are reminded that civilians might be killed or that Americans hostages might die (which happened recently in the Afghanistan-Pakistan borderlands), in principle Americans favor drone strikes – and in this week’s poll, Republicans and Democrats agree. Independents are the least supportive: only 51% approve.

The Obama administration gets some credit for its management of drone strikes. Just over half the public has at least some confidence that it makes the right decisions about where and when to order drone strikes. Just over a third report little or no confidence. Even about a third of Republicans say they have at least some confidence in the Administration’s decisions when to use drones.

While Democrats are generally satisfied with the number of drone strikes overseas, about a third of Republicans would like to see more of them. Three times as many Republicans want more drone strikes than say there should be fewer. Independents tend to favor fewer strikes.

One reason for the partisan differences may be that Republicans worry more about terrorism. 17% of Republicans describe terrorism as their most important issue, behind only the economy. Just 6% of Democrats name it, and for them terrorism ranks far behind their four top issues: the economy, Social Security, health care and education.

Half of Republicans think the U.S. is less safe from terrorism today than it was in 2001. And more than seven in ten Republicans think the chances of a terrorist attack in the United States in the next 12 months are at least somewhat likely, far more than the percentage of Democrats who think this.

The President does fairly well on his handling of terrorism in this week‘s poll. While his approval rating on this is far below its high after the killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011, it is better than it has been in recent months. In this week’s poll just about as many approve of the way the President is handling terrorism as disapprove.

See the full poll results

Economist/YouGov poll archives can be found here.