Does Chaos in Afghanistan Affect Biden's Approval?
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(CNN) -
Americans continue to support the decision to leave Afghanistan, according to a series of new polls released this Sunday, but for the most part they think the withdrawal was mismanaged.
And the public gives President Joe Biden a relatively low score for withdrawing from Afghanistan, possibly compounding the drop in his approval ratings that he already suffered this summer.
In a CBS News / YouGov poll conducted August 18-20, 44% of Americans said that the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan had gone very wrong and another 30% said something had gone wrong.
Only a quarter said that something had even gone well.
At the same time, the pullout itself remained widely popular, with 63% approving of the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan.
Even among the disapproving minority, a significant fraction said they thought the troop withdrawal should have been better managed, not that it should not have occurred at all.
Only a fifth of the public disapproved of the pullout, saying their disapproval was because some US troops should have stayed.
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On the other hand, in an NBC News poll conducted between August 14 and 17, Americans affirmed by 61% to 29% that the war in Afghanistan was not worth it, a view almost identical to that of 2014.
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The situation of the Afghans
A 59% majority of Americans believe the United States is not doing enough to help Afghans flee the country, according to the CBS / YouGov poll.
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Even more, 81% say the United States should take in Afghans who worked for US troops and officials in recent years in intelligence services or as translators and who could now be punished by the Taliban.
Although this is a narrowly defined group, the overwhelming support for their resettlement contrasts with the frequent historical reluctance of Americans to host refugees.
Foreign policy polls are often confusing or mixed.
This spring, for example, a poll asking Americans if they approved of withdrawing all US troops from Afghanistan revealed that a majority approve.
Another poll, in which voters were asked to choose between withdrawing all or just some troops, found greater support for the latter option.
This level of variation suggests that respondents often do not have strong pre-existing opinions, but are often guided by political leaders or the way polls ask their questions.
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The last two polls also tell somewhat different stories about Biden's current Afghanistan ratings, but both show him below average on this issue.
The president's approval rating on the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan stands at 47%, according to CBS / YouGov, up from 60% in July.
The NBC poll puts him even further in negative territory, with only 25% approval of his discharge of the situation in Afghanistan.
Biden's approval decline after Afghanistan
Both polls reveal that Americans are sharply divided on Biden's overall performance, down from his positive numbers at the beginning of the year.
In the CBS / YouGov poll, 50% approved and 50% disapproved (less than in July, when 58% approved and 42% disapproved).
In the NBC poll, 49% approved and 48% disapproved (compared to 53% approval and 39% disapproval in April).
However, Biden's numbers had started to decline long before Kabul fell to the Taliban.
That makes his response in Afghanistan unlikely to be a major factor.
A third poll, conducted by Gallup, found that the president's approval rating had fallen to 49%, down from 56% in June.
The index is roughly equivalent to the 50% it had in July.
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"Interviews conducted in the last three days of the survey period, after Kabul fell to the Taliban, showed slightly less positive ratings for Biden than previously," wrote Gallup's Jeffrey M. Jones.
He summarized the results as an inconclusive suggestion that "events in Afghanistan had a modest negative effect on Biden's public approval."
Covid-19 and the situation in general, important factors
NBC pollsters, for their part, pointed to the growing pessimism of Americans about COVID-19 and the country as a whole as more important factors.
Only 37% of Americans in that survey said the worst of the US pandemic was over, up from 61% in April.
And only 29% said things in the nation were generally going in the right direction, down from 36% in the spring.
"The best way to understand this poll is to forget about Afghanistan," pollster Bill McInturff, the Republican half of NBC's bipartisan polling team, told the network.
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The CBS News / YouGov poll surveyed 2,142 US adults between August 18 and 20 using a nationally representative online panel, with a sampling error of ± 2.3 points.
Meanwhile, the NBC News poll was conducted by Hart Research Associates and Public Opinion Strategies.
He consulted 1,000 American adults between August 14 and 17, using live telephone interviews to reach both landlines and mobiles.
It has a sampling error margin of ± 3.1 points.
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