59% Want Troops Home from Afghanistan

Thursday, August 11, 2011

Support for bringing home U.S. troops from Afghanistan is on the rise as few Americans think we have a clearly defined mission anymore in that troubled country.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 59% of Likely Voters nationwide want the troops to come home either immediately or within a year. Twenty-eight percent (28%) oppose any firm timetable and 13% are not sure. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

At 59%, support for bring the troops home is up from 51% in June, 52% in March, 43% last September, and 39% in September 2009.

Notably, 43% of Republicans now support bringing the troops home within a year while just 42% oppose a firm timetable. As recently as June, most Republicans opposed any firm timetable.

Just 22% now believe the U.S. has a clearly defined mission in Afghanistan.

The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on August 9-10, 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.

Seventy-six percent (76%) of Democrats and 58% of unaffiliated voters want the troops home within a year.

Among those aligned with the Tea Party, 47% say it’s time to bring the troops home and 43% oppose any firm timetable.

Support for the U.S. military mission in Libya is down to 24%.

Seventy-five percent (75%) of all voters agree that “the United States should not commit its forces to military action overseas unless the cause is vital to our national interest.â€