It’s now been a week since Donald Trump and Bibi Netanyahu began their war of destruction and regime change in Iran, a conflict that has gone regional as Iran retaliated. Polls taken before the bombs started dropping showed there was far from any national consensus favoring an attack on Iran or any other foreign military adventure. While it takes some time to conduct public-opinion surveys, it seemed Americans really would prefer their leaders focus on the economy and the cost of living.

Now there’s enough postattack polling to make it clear this is a war that is very unpopular, much like its commander-in-chief in the White House. G. Elliott Morris collected eight polls taken since last weekend and found just one (from Fox News) showing net approval of the war at zero. The rest were negative, ranging from YouGov at minus-10 percent to CNN-SSRS at minus-18 percent. The polling is roughly at the same levels of Trump’s net job-approval ratings (currently at minus-11.2 percent at RealClearPolitics, minus-12.8 percent at Silver Bulletin, and minus-13 percent at Decision Desk HQ). As Morris points out, this is really a historical anomaly:

This [is] the most unpopular war at launch in the history of modern polling. For comparison, 92% of Americans backed the war in Afghanistan, and 72% supported the Iraq invasion when those conflicts began. If history is any guide, war polling only moves in one direction from here: down.

This [is] the most unpopular war at launch in the history of modern polling. For comparison, 92% of Americans backed the war in Afghanistan, and 72% supported the Iraq invasion when those conflicts began. If history is any guide, war polling only moves in one direction from here: down.

Nate Silver makes a similar observation about wars past and present:

[As of 2008] the relevant data set for the effect of wars on American politics was comprised of 4 or 5 (depending on how you count) post-WW2 conflicts: Korea, Vietnam, the 1990–91 Gulf War (a.k.a. Operation Desert Storm) and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, sometimes lumped together under the “War on Terror”. The conventional wisdom was something like this:The war will initially be popular, producing patriotic feelings and boosting the president’s popularity: the so-called rally-around-the-flag effect.However, unless it is resolved quickly (as was only the case in the Gulf War from among these examples), it will eventually become a quagmire, and the president’s popularity will suffer after extended deployments and deaths of American troops.

[As of 2008] the relevant data set for the effect of wars on American politics was comprised of 4 or 5 (depending on how you count) post-WW2 conflicts: Korea, Vietnam, the 1990–91 Gulf War (a.k.a. Operation Desert Storm) and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, sometimes lumped together under the “War on Terror”. The conventional wisdom was something like this:

The war will initially be popular, producing patriotic feelings and boosting the president’s popularity: the so-called rally-around-the-flag effect.

However, unless it is resolved quickly (as was only the case in the Gulf War from among these examples), it will eventually become a quagmire, and the president’s popularity will suffer after extended deployments and deaths of American troops.

Silver goes on to hypothesize that strong public reactions — positive or negative — to wars may have become a bit obsolete thanks to technological changes that have sharply reduced U.S. war casualties and the absence of a military draft that made wars up to and including the Vietnam War a truly national fight:

So the emerging conventional wisdom … is that American voters are increasingly indifferent about wars — until and unless there are attacks on American soil, large numbers of casualties among American troops, or a draft.None of those things were remotely likely as a result of Venezuela. But while I’m not going to speculate about what could spin up from Iran, there are obviously more risks. It’s a much bigger country in the most politically volatile part of the world. This time, the U.S./Israeli operations are far more than a “surgical strike”, like the strikes on Iranian nuclear sites last June.

So the emerging conventional wisdom … is that American voters are increasingly indifferent about wars — until and unless there are attacks on American soil, large numbers of casualties among American troops, or a draft.

None of those things were remotely likely as a result of Venezuela. But while I’m not going to speculate about what could spin up from Iran, there are obviously more risks. It’s a much bigger country in the most politically volatile part of the world. This time, the U.S./Israeli operations are far more than a “surgical strike”, like the strikes on Iranian nuclear sites last June.

But there’s an alternative explanation for the initial unpopularity of the current war: Unlike the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Persian Gulf War, and the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, the Iran war is very much the project of one party and one president (yes, there was a lot of Democratic opposition to the Iraq War from the beginning, but there was a lot of support as well). In Congress, and in public opinion, Democrats overwhelmingly oppose Trump’s war, and Republicans overwhelmingly support it. Despite initial talk of a “MAGA revolt” against the war based on negative reactions from a few high-profile social-media influencers, the more Republicans love Donald Trump, the more they support his war, as NBC News explains from its latest polling:

An overwhelming majority of Democrats, 89%, say the U.S. shouldn’t have struck Iran. Among independents, 58% agree.Republicans are overall more supportive of the strikes: 77% say the U.S. should have struck Iran, while 15% disagree. But there’s a significant divide between Republicans who consider themselves aligned with Trump’s Make America Great Again movement and those who don’t.A full 90% of self-identified MAGA-aligned Republicans back the strikes, with just 5% saying they don’t think they should have been launched.

An overwhelming majority of Democrats, 89%, say the U.S. shouldn’t have struck Iran. Among independents, 58% agree.

Republicans are overall more supportive of the strikes: 77% say the U.S. should have struck Iran, while 15% disagree. But there’s a significant divide between Republicans who consider themselves aligned with Trump’s Make America Great Again movement and those who don’t.

A full 90% of self-identified MAGA-aligned Republicans back the strikes, with just 5% saying they don’t think they should have been launched.

The more it looks like this war will drag on, the more partisan perceptions of it are likely to harden. There remains a significant risk that 2024 Trump voters anxious about the economy will continue to defect from his coalition if it appears he cares more about toppling overseas regimes than about addressing living costs. And if the war produces a sustained energy price hike or the conflict widens, it could really begin to have a negative effect on Trump’s already poor approval ratings and the odds of Republicans hanging onto Congress in November.

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