New Gallup Poll on Support for Drone Strikes

Ritika linked yesterday to a new Gallup poll on public attitudes towards drone strikes. The results are not surprising, but they are interesting. Americans largely support drone strike against foreign terrorist suspects abroad (65 percent support) but are less supportive (41 percent support) of targeting Americans overseas and are really not into domestic drone strikes (25 percent support)---which do not happen anyway. Republicans like drone strikes better than independents and Democrats do, but overseas strikes have clear majorities of all three political groups.  Support for drone strikes rises among those who follow the news about drones carefully. Gallup's bottom line:

A clear majority of Americans say the U.S. government should use drones to launch airstrikes in other countries against suspected terrorists, but support drops significantly below the majority level when Americans are asked about the use of drones against U.S. citizens, either at home or abroad, or against noncitizens living in the U.S. Although it was Republican Sen. Paul who filibustered in protest of the potential or possible future use of drones in the U.S., rank-and-file Republicans across the country are actually more supportive of such actions than are independents or Democrats. And, even with Paul's effort to bring the issue of drones into the national spotlight during his 13-hour filibuster, less than half of Americans are paying very or somewhat close attention to news about the U.S government's use of drones. Americans who are following the news at least somewhat closely are slightly more likely to say the government should use drones in each of the four circumstances.

As Gallup notes, these results differ somewhat from a Fox News poll earlier in the month, a poll which showed higher levels of support for strikes, including against U.S. citizens. As Fox News summarized the poll:

Overall, 74 percent of voters approve of using drones to kill a suspected terrorist overseas.  That includes majorities of Republicans (80 percent), independents (71 percent) and Democrats (69 percent), as well as both men (78 percent) and women (71 percent). The level of approval drops from 74 percent to 60 percent, however, if the suspected terrorist is a U.S. citizen. Even when it comes to drone use on U.S. soil, a 56-percent majority of voters approves of such strikes on a suspected foreign terrorist. Voters, however, disapprove of drone attacks when they are aimed at a U.S. citizen suspected of being a terrorist on U.S. soil.  In those circumstances, by a 50-45 percent margin, voters say no. . . . The poll finds that 32 percent of voters think that yes, the president should be able to authorize the use of deadly force domestically against an American terrorist.  Still, about twice that many---63 percent---disagree and want checks on the president. Again, agreement is bipartisan, as most Republicans (70 percent) and independents (70 percent) and a majority of Democrats (54 percent) oppose the president having the sole power under these conditions.

Gallup hypothesizes that the results may reflect methodological differences in the polling. I suspect that the explanation is more political: Rand Paul's filibuster, which took place after the Fox poll, probably accounts for the slump in popularity of domestic drones strikes---and may have dragged down support for overseas strikes as well.