UMD Poll: Partisan Divide Deepens Following Recent Russian Mutiny

Pre- and post-rebellion responses reveal intensified differences between Republicans and Democrats

The sixth University of Maryland Critical Issues Poll tracking Americans’ opinions on the war in Ukraine happened to be fielded the very same week as the June 23-24 Russian mutiny by the Wagner mercenary group, revealing real-time insights into the impact of the mutiny on American public support for Ukraine.

According to the poll and its director, Department of Government and Politics Professor Shibley Telhami, the mutiny heightened the partisan divide among Americans on U.S. policy toward Ukraine. Compared to Democrat respondents who completed the poll before the mutiny began, 7 percentage-points more Democrats said that the United States should stay the course in supporting Ukraine. On the flip side, 9 percentage-points fewer Republican respondents said the same after the mutiny. 

Evaluating the costs associated with U.S. support, the share of post-mutiny Democrat respondents who said that the United States’ current level of support was “too much” was nearly sliced in half, from 14% before the mutiny to 8% after. While just 1% more Republicans said U.S. support was “too much” after the mutiny, Republicans who said the current level of support was “the right level” went down from 25% before the mutiny to 19% after.

“The Russian mutiny has highlighted the two critical issues that are impacting American public attitudes toward Ukraine: The assessment of who is winning and who is losing and the assessment of the impact of Ukraine on our presidential elections,” Telhami said. “As we enter the 2024 presidential campaign season, Ukraine has been a major foreign policy topic for candidates. Perceived Russian failure and Ukrainian success would reflect well on President Biden’s policy and may thus worry Republican candidates who want to defeat him in the election.”

However, despite the increased partisanship in the responses from pre- to post-mutiny, the June poll did reveal a slight increase in Americans’ support for the U.S. staying the course in supporting Ukraine; 43% expressed support in June compared to the 38% who did the same in the March-April poll.

“This is likely a function of the public’s assessment of Russia and Ukraine’s performances in the war, which we have found to be highly correlated with attitudes on the level of support for Ukraine,” Telhami wrote in a Brookings Institution article about the findings. “We found a small change since March-April, with more Democrats and Republicans saying Russia is failing and Ukraine is succeeding, which is likely the result of the announcement that Ukraine had initiated its long-anticipated counteroffensive, muted by reported modest success.”

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Published on Thu, Jul 13, 2023 - 1:39PM