41% Give Obama Good Marks On Response to Crisis in Egypt

Voters give mixed marks to President Obama’s response to the crisis in Egypt, and many think United Nations involvement would make things worse.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 41% of Likely U.S. Voters rate the way the Obama administration has responded to the situation in Egypt as good or excellent. Twenty-two percent (22%) view the administration’s response so far as poor. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

But only 18% of voters say things would be better if the UN stepped in to help resolve the political crisis in Egypt. A plurality (46%) say UN involvement would make the situation worse, while 13% think it would have no impact. One-in-four voters (24%) aren’t sure.

Most Americans expect the unrest in Egypt to spread to other Middle Eastern countries and think that will be bad for the United States. But a sizable majority also believe the United States should stay out of Egypt’s current problems.

The U.S. government seemed initially reluctant to get involved after large-scale and growing street protests began in Egypt last week. But over the weekend, an emissary from President Obama reportedly urged long-time Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak not to run for reelection this fall and to allow free and open elections instead. Mubarak has since announced he will not seek reelection.

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The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on January 31-February 1, 2011 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.