Voters Still Expect Little Improvement In Afghanistan

Voters continue to give a mixed response about the future of the war in Iraq, but remain more negative about the U.S. conflict in Afghanistan.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of Likely U.S. Voters shows just 18% believe the situation in Afghanistan will get better over the next six months while 32% think it will get worse. Thirty-six percent (36%) believe the situation there will remain about the same and another 14% are undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

These findings are virtually identical to those found a month ago.  However, confidence in U.S. efforts are still well below results found in early May, just after the killing of Osama bin Laden.

Over the past two years, belief that the U.S. situation in Afghanistan will improve has ranged from a low 15% in August to a high of 34% in December 2009.

Twenty-seven percent (27%) believe the situation in Iraq will get better in the next six months, up slightly over the past two months. This figure jumped to 32% following bin Laden’s death, but was consistently higher in 2009 and 2010.

Now, 24% believe the situation will get worse while 37% expect it stay about the same. Another 13% are undecided.

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The national survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on October 8-9, 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.