Majority Rate Biden ‘Poor’ on Afghanistan, Fear Hundreds of Americans Left Behind

Voters have turned sharply against President Joe Biden on his handling of the Afghanistan withdrawal, and most believe that hundreds of Americans will be left behind after the August 31 deadline.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that only 32% of Likely U.S. Voters rate the Biden administration’s handling of the current situation in Afghanistan good or excellent, while 52% rate it poor. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

Fifty percent (50%) of voters say Biden’s determination to withdraw all U.S. military forces from Afghanistan by Tuesday’s deadline is a bad decision, while just 34% think it’s a good decision and another 16% are not sure. This marks a drastic decline in support for Biden’s Afghanistan policy. In April, after the president announced he would withdraw U.S. troops by September 11, 48% of voters approved and only 32% said the Afghanistan withdrawal was a bad idea.

Fifty-one percent (51%) now believe more than 100 American civilians will be left behind in Afghanistan after the U.S. military withdrawal is completed, including 36% who think more than 500 will be left behind. Only 19% think the military withdrawal will leave fewer than 50 American civilians stranded in Afghanistan, including eight percent (8%) who think no one will be left behind. Nineteen percent (19%) are not sure.

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The survey of 1,000 U.S. Likely Voters was conducted on August 26 and 29, 2021 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

Politics strongly influences views of how Biden is handling Afghanistan. Fifty-three percent (53%) of Democratic voters rate the administration’s handling of the current situation in Afghanistan as good or excellent, but only 16% of Republicans and 24% of voters not affiliated with either major party share that view. Seventy-eight percent (78%) of GOP voters rate the Biden’s administration’s handling of Afghanistan poor, an opinion shared by 24% of Democrats and 57% of unaffiliated voters.

Fifty-three percent (53%) of Republicans believe more than 500 American civilians will be left behind in Afghanistan after the U.S. military withdrawal, a view shared by 20% of Democrats and 36% of unaffiliated voters. Forty-three percent (43%) of Democrats think fewer than 100 American civilians will be stranded in Afghanistan after the withdrawal, an opinion shared by 13% of both Republicans and unaffiliated voters.

Most Republicans (71%) and unaffiliated voters (51%) think it was a bad decision for Biden to withdraw all U.S. military forces out of Afghanistan by Tuesday’s deadline, but only 29% of Democrats agree. Fifty-one percent (51%) of Democrats think it was a good decision for Biden to stick to the August 31 deadline for troop withdrawal, but only 18% of Republicans and 29% of unaffiliated voters share that opinion.

Voters under 40 are more likely than their elders to support Biden’s Afghanistan policy.

More Black voters (49%) than whites (28%) or other minorities (36%) rate the Biden administration’s handling of Afghanistan good or excellent.

Government employees are more likely than private-sector workers to say it was a good decision for Biden to stick to the August 31 deadline for U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Among voters who think it was a good decision for Biden to withdraw all U.S. troops before Tuesday’s deadline, 52% believe 100 or fewer American civilians will be left behind in Afghanistan after the withdrawal. By contrast, among voters who think it was a bad idea for Biden to stick to the troop withdrawal deadline, 60% think more than 500 U.S. civilians will be stranded in Afghanistan.

A majority of voters don’t trust either President Joe Biden’s administration or the news media to tell the truth about the situation in Afghanistan, and most think it’s worse than they’re being told.

With the Taliban taking over Afghanistan, a majority of voters now believe America is less safe than it was before the 9/11 attacks two decades ago.

Additional information from this survey and a full demographic breakdown are available to Platinum Members only.

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