Survey finds growing partisan divisions on US views of NATO, Ukraine

According to one report, US support for NATO and supporting Ukraine in a defensive war against Russia is decreasing. The study was announced Wednesday. By Pew Research Center.

A Pew study reveals the hard numbers behind the division on Capitol Hill over support for Ukraine and the attacks by Republican presidential candidate and former President Trump, as NATO countries share the burden of the security alliance. It is criticized for not doing so.

“We know from the last election that what is on the minds of both voters and candidates and will be part of the discussion leading up to the election is the role of the United States, whether alone or in the world. “As a NATO member,” said Moira Fagan, a researcher at Pew Research Center.

“And these numbers really speak to that moment.”

The Pew survey found that most Americans support NATO (58 percent), but that number has declined by 4 percentage points since 2023, representing a statistically significant decline. the authors write.

The partisan divide is even sharper, with three-quarters of Democrats rating the organization favorably, compared to just 43% of Republicans. This number is down from 55% in March 2022, one month after Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

“These numbers have flipped,” Fagan explained, pointing to shifting support for Ukraine among Republicans.

“When war broke out in spring 2022, about half of Republicans said the U.S. was providing too much, not enough, aid to Ukraine, compared to just 9% who said that at the time.”

Currently, about half of Republicans say the U.S. is providing too much aid to Ukraine, while 13% say it is not providing enough aid, Fagan continued.

“Democrats are pretty much stable in their opinion that support is either not enough or about right.”

The numbers illustrate deep divisions within Congressional Republicans, with a majority of House Republicans voting against a $61 billion Ukraine-related security aid package that was delayed for months over Republican opposition in April. . This bill was passed with Democratic support.

The Pew poll was conducted April 1-7, just before the House passed the Ukraine aid bill. The survey was conducted among 3,600 U.S. adults who are members of the center’s American Trends Panel, and respondents were recruited by random sampling of residential addresses across the country.

Pew said the survey was weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisanship, education and other categories.

The survey also tested Americans’ knowledge of NATO, with just over half (56 percent) correctly identifying Europe and North America as the two regions of the alliance. However, Americans were confused about Ukraine’s relationship with the alliance, with 41% correctly identifying Ukraine as a nonmember state.

“People who have more knowledge about NATO tend to view it more favorably,” the report’s authors wrote.

Fagan said the numbers show there is no partisan divide in knowledge about NATO and that Americans are generally well-informed about the nature of current events and hot-button issues. He said that

President Biden is scheduled to host the annual NATO summit in Washington in July to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the founding of the NATO alliance. NATO allies see the summit as an important opportunity to demonstrate the alliance’s solidarity in supporting Ukraine, despite disagreements among members over Kyiv’s future within the alliance.

And while most Democrats and Republicans in Congress support America’s participation in NATO, the alliance has become an obsession for former President Trump, who threatened to withdraw the United States from the alliance and He has refrained from getting involved in defense agreements and criticized them. Member states that have not yet increased defense spending to the alliance’s goal of 2% of gross domestic product.

Trump’s likely victory in the 2024 presidential election prompted lawmakers in December to pass a bill that would bar the president from leaving NATO, but skeptics view the law’s provisions as weak. ing.

President Trump’s hostility to NATO has fueled the general isolationism of his “Make America Great Again” movement, which critics say threatens to push the United States out of its position as a world leader. There are concerns that it will embolden dictators like President Putin. President Trump has boasted of negotiating with President Putin to end the war in Ukraine, and there is concern among Kiev and his supporters that any deal would undermine Ukraine’s sovereignty and security. There are growing concerns that this may be the case.

According to the Pew survey, Americans have an overwhelmingly negative view of President Putin, with 88% saying they have no confidence that the Russian president will do the right thing regarding world affairs.

However, there is a partisan divide over the U.S.’s favorability of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. At the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Ukraine’s president was hailed as a courageous wartime leader who led a desperate defense against a much larger, nuclear-armed Russia that had launched an illegal invasion.

But after two years of war, Americans’ favorability ratings, especially among Republicans, are declining.

Forty-eight percent of Americans said they had some or a great deal of confidence in Zelensky to do the right thing regarding world affairs, an eight-point decrease from 2023. Also, only 34% of Republicans supported Zelensky, compared to 65% of Democrats. .

“We’ve found that negative views of Russia, including distrust of President Putin, have remained really stable since the war broke out,” Fagan said.

“But what we’re seeing is that views of NATO have declined slightly over the past few years. In general, the public is less likely to support aiding Ukraine…There’s a partisan divide. “Democrats are likely to say that aid to Ukraine serves U.S. national security; Republicans are likely to say it undermines national security,” she continued.

“Some of this movement we’re seeing is driven solely by declining support for NATO and Ukraine, typically among Republicans, whereas support for Democrats is a little more stable. are doing.”