Since former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak decided to step down Friday after weeks of national protests, U.S. voter confidence about the transition’s impact on the United States has increased.
Voters are worried that they’ll pay a lot more at the pump because of the ongoing political unrest in Egypt.
A sizable number of U.S. voters continue to believe that relations between Israel and the United States will worsen in the year ahead.
Most voters still view Israel as one of America's leading allies.
Although his whereabouts have been unknown for years, most Americans still think Osama bin Laden is alive, but they also don't believe that killing or capturing the al Qaeda leader will make the United States any safer.
U.S. voters are now as pessimistic about America’s relationship with Israel as they are about relations with the Muslim world.
Despite President Obama's meeting last week with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to affirm the importance of the U.S.–Israeli relationship, 31% of U.S. voters believe relations between the two countries will be worse a year from now.
Forty-nine percent (49%) of U.S. voters believe pro-Palestinian activists on the Gaza-bound aid ships raided by Israeli forces are to blame for the deaths that resulted in the high-profile incident.
Israel’s insistence on building new settlements in disputed Palestinian territory has heightened tensions with the United States. Forty-nine percent (49%) of U.S. voters think Israel should be required to stop those settlements as part of a peace deal with the Palestinians.
With terrorist attacks an almost a daily occurrence in Pakistan as troops there fight a widening Taliban front, 42% of likely voters believe it would be impossible for the United States to win the war in Afghanistan if Pakistan remains unstable.
Forty-eight percent (48%) of Americans nationwide believe that it is the responsibility of American Muslims to speak out against terrorist attacks on the United States.
With Israel and Iran turning up the bellicose language, U.S. voters are less confident than they were at the beginning of the year that Israelis and Palestinians can live side by side in peace.
Forty-nine percent (49%) of Americans say that if Israel launches an attack against Iran, the United States should help Israel. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 37% believe the United States should do nothing while just 2% believe the U.S. should help Iran.
Two weeks of military action in the Gaza Strip has done nothing to move public opinion in America.
Over half of Americans (52%) now believe it is possible for Israel and the Palestinians to live in peace, but just 35% think Barack Obama is likely to help end the conflict during his presidency.
Americans, while far more sympathetic to Israel than the Palestinians, are closely divided over whether the Jewish state should be taking military action against militants in the Gaza Strip.
Forty-two percent (42%) of Americans say that if Israel launches an attack against Iran, the United States should help Israel. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 46% believe the United States should do nothing while just 1% believe the U.S. should help Iran.
In the wake of recent missile tests, 71% of American voters say that Iran represents a serious threat to the United States and 82% believe that nation is a threat to Israel.
On Wednesday, President George W. Bush expressed optimism about prospects for a U.S. sponsored Middle East peace conference, but the American public does not share his optimism.
Just 27% of American adults believe it is “possible for both Israel and the Palestinian people to peacefully exist side-by-side in the Middle East.”
