Poll Shows Americans See North Korea As Greatest Threat By A Wide Margin Ahead Of ISIS
A majority of Americans, both Republicans and Democrats, view North Korea as the most immediate threat to the United States, according to a new SurveyMonkey poll, which was conducted from October 13 through October 17. The majority opinion shows there has been a shift since a poll was taken in July that saw 41 percent of Americans agree North Korea was the greatest immediate threat and 28 percent said it was ISIS.
The margin has widened as the poll shows that today, 54 percent of Americans view North Korea as the biggest threat out there while 19 percent still see ISIS as the most dangerous. Even more alarming is that the poll showed 72 percent of Americans fear the U.S. will wind up in a military conflict over the next four years.
Today, however, Americans across party lines are in full agreement that North Korea poses, by far, the most significant threat. The poll shows 53 percent of Republicans and Independents, as well as 55 percent of Democrats, all voted for North Korea.
An even larger share of Americans also said they would like a diplomatic resolution rather than a military resolution when it came to handling the crisis in North Korea, according to the new poll.
Earlier this month, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson indicated that the United States has “lines of communication” with North Korea. But President Donald Trump responded with a couple of tweets shortly after that which stated the Secretary of State was “wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man.”
Since July, however, Americans have become even more decided about their desired path to resolution, with a 64 percent majority voting in favor of the U.S. taking a diplomatic approach to North Koreas; up 5 points since July.
Americans see North Korea as a threat, but they're also concerned U.S. would take
military action too quickly. https://t.co/0SJUHahCV6— CBS News Poll (@CBSNewsPoll) September 26, 2017
Though Republicans are pretty split on whether they think the United States should use military action or diplomacy, the party appears to be leaning more and more toward diplomacy since July as well, from 42 percent to 46 percent. On top of that, eight in 10 Democrats favor diplomacy, up from 76 percent in July, while 60 percent of independents are also in favor of diplomacy.
Overall, a majority of Americans (56 percent) also disapprove of the way Trump is handling the situation with North Korea, with differences across party lines.
The poll was conducted from October 13 through October 17, 2017, among a national sample of 5,047 adults. Respondents for this non-probability survey were selected from the nearly 3 million people who take surveys on the SurveyMonkey platform each day. Results have an error estimate of plus or minus 2.0 percentage points.
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