The portion of Americans against sending additional weapons to Ukraine is on the rise, growing by seven percent since May, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll.
The poll, published on Thursday, indicates that support for Ukraine is waning, as 46 percent of Americans were in favor of shipping weapons to the country in May, but now only 41 percent would back such an initiative. Conversely, 29 percent of Americans were against sending weapons in May, but that number has surged and now sits at 35 percent. This marks an 11-point swing in the change of public opinion.
There is a break among party lines, as 52 percent of Democrats surveyed continue to support military aid to the embattled nation. However, this is a sharp decline from May, when 61 percent of Democrats were in favor of continued military aid, per Reuters.
Conversely, just 39 percent of Republicans backed sending more weapons to the country in May, and that number has dwindled to 35 percent in the latest survey.
“The Reuters/Ipsos poll was conducted online and nationwide, surveying 1,005 U.S. adults,” noted Reuters’ Jason Lange and Patricia Zengerle. “It had a credibility interval, a measure of precision, of about 4 percentage points in either direction.”
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Elizabeth Hoffman, director of congressional and government affairs at the Center for Strategic Studies, told Reuters, “The declining support is having a negative effect on congressional support, and eventually, prospects for additional aid packages.”
Saturday’s continuing resolution (CR) to fund the government at current levels reflects Hoffman’s assessment. While the U.S. Senate worked on its own stop-gap that would have included $6 billion in aid for Ukraine, the House of Representatives successfully passed a CR that did not include Ukraine funding, which was ultimately passed by the Senate and signed into law by President Joe Biden.
Democrat officials with Biden at the forefront, as well as some Republicans, have been proponents of continued aid packages to Ukraine. Currently, the Biden administration is seeking another $24 billion in aid on top of the $113 billion the U.S. has already provided the nation, as Breitbart News’s Kristina Wong noted.
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More populist Republicans tend to reject the idea of shipping more tax dollars or American equipment to the nation, and the issue has split much of the Republican presidential primary field.
Former President Donald Trump, who abides by an America First agenda, has vowed to end the war in Ukraine if elected president. While addressing striking members of the United Auto Workers as counter-programming to the GOP debate on September 27, Trump’s populist vision was on full display, with criticisms of Ukraine aid at the forefront.
“If we can afford to send hundreds of billions of dollars to Ukraine, then we can afford to have an auto industry that pays our workers a good living wage and keeps our workers working,” Trump said.
Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, while speaking in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, in April, said he “would not give another dollar to Ukraine” if he were elected president, Breitbart News documented.
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Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) said during the second Republican primary debate in September, “It’s in our interest to end this war, and that’s what I will do as president.”
In contrast, former Vice President Mike Pence has advocated for continued aid to Ukraine, telling Sirius XM’s Breitbart News Saturday in July that it “is in the interest” of the United States.
“But supporting the Ukrainian military to repel and defeat the Russian invasion is in the interest of the United States of America, and it’s in the interest of freedom,” Pence said, explaining that he has met Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“I will tell you I have no doubt in my mind that if the Russian army was able to overrun Ukraine, it would not be too long before they crossed a border where, under our NATO charter, our American armed forces would be required to go and fight,” Pence said, describing himself as someone who ascribes to the “Reagan Doctrine.”
Former Gov. Nikki Haley (R-SC) is also a hardline supporter of providing aid to Ukraine. In late September, she criticized Trump as “weak in the knees when it comes to Ukraine.”