WASHINGTON — Americans are evenly and deeply divided over whether President Barack Obama should send 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan, and public approval of the president’s handling of the situation has tumbled, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, has recommended the troop increase, and 47 percent of those polled favor it, while 49 percent oppose it. Most on both sides hold their views “strongly.”
The survey also found that a large majority of Americans say the administration lacks a clear plan for dealing with the problems in Afghanistan. Fifty-seven percent of those polled approve of how Obama is carrying out his duties as commander in chief, but confidence in his leadership on the Afghan war has eroded. About two-thirds of Democrats give Obama positive marks on Afghanistan, essentially unchanged, but there has been some erosion among independents; over the past month, they have gone from narrowly positive to narrowly negative in their appraisals.
The Oct. 15-18 phone poll of 1,004 adults has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points. The Washington Post
