Polls show even MAGA has soured on Trump’s Iran war

It’s now very clear that Donald Trump’s war of choice in Iran is not going to be some temporary military adventure or a “watch and learn” demonstration of American power but a dubious exercise with no clear purpose and no definitive end in sight. As the war drags on, a serious escalation is on the table and gasoline prices are spiking once again. So it seems inevitable that the conflict will affect the midterm elections, at least on the margins. And as the polls show, that’s bad news for Republicans.

To be clear, the war has never had anything like majority support. Usually, in the wake of the onset of hostilities, particularly if they seem to be going well for the United States (as they tend to at first), there’s a spike of rally-round-the-flag sentiment. Not this time. Looking at Silver Bulletin’s polling averages on support for this war, it peaked at 40.5 percent on March 15. It’s now at 33.8 percent with disapproval at a near high of 58.3 percent. Generally speaking, opposition to the war has never flagged. It did abate a bit when shooting temporarily stopped and petroleum markets reacted positively, but the overall trajectory remains negative.

The two most recent national polls showed a significant gap between Trump’s overall job-approval rating, bad as it is, and support for his war. A July 13 Economist-YouGov survey places Trump’s job approval at 37 percent. But only 27 percent now believe going to war with Iran was the right decision. A decisive 65 percent of Americans think “we should make a deal to end the war as quickly as possible,” and 48 percent say the U.S. should end the war immediately (presumably even without a deal). Similarly, a July 13 Washington Post-Ipsos poll placed Trump’s overall job approval at 37 percent, alongside terrible numbers for the war:

As the war toggles repeatedly between resumptions of military strikes and efforts to stop military action in favor of negotiations, 28 percent of Americans say the war has been worth fighting, compared with 68 percent who say it was not. 

The assessment of this war is worse than in any Post-ABC News poll during the long Iraq War and on par with the worst ratings of the war in Afghanistan, which came in July 2013, when 28 percent said that conflict was worth fighting and 67 percent said it was not.

Up until now, Republican (and especially MAGA Republican) support for the war has kept it from becoming a complete public-opinion debacle. But that could be changing too. New data from Politico suggests support for the war in Trump’s base is now flagging:

Half of President Donald Trump’s MAGA base thought the Iran war was worth its economic costs in May. Now, just a little more than a third do.

That precipitous, 13-point drop in just two months, according to a new POLITICO Poll, reveals how the president’s most die-hard supporters are starting to agree with the majority of Americans who have long opposed the U.S.’ involvement in the war.

In the aforementioned Economist-YouGov survey, 51 percent of self-identified MAGA supporters say the U.S. should “make a deal to end the war in Iran as quickly as possible.” This shows at a minimum that patience with Trump’s policies is wearing thin, even in his core base of supporters.

This erosion of support for what is now clearly becoming a forever war comes within the broader context of Trump’s flagging overall popularity, which ebbs and flows from day to day but has mostly been flat in recent weeks and months. Per Silver Bulletin averages, Trump’s current job approval rating is 39.2 percent; it hasn’t been over 40 percent since the end of March. 47.3 percent of Americans strongly disapprove of Trump’s job performance, as compared to 22.9 percent who strongly approve. Republicans have been doing marginally better recently in the generic congressional ballot measuring 2026 U.S. House voting intentions, but they still trail significantly with Democrats holding a 5.8 percent advantage in the Silver Bulletin averages and a 4.7 percent lead at RealClearPolitics. None of this bodes well for Trump and his party in November.