Americans generally disapprove of President Donald Trump’s threats this week against North Korea, a new HuffPost/YouGov survey finds, even as they remain close to evenly divided on his overall approach to dealing with the country.
“North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States,” Trump said Tuesday in a statement to reporters. “They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.” (On Thursday, he followed up by saying that those comments might not have been tough enough).
The poll showed that 48 percent of Americans disapproved of the “fire and fury” statement, with 37 percent approving.
Americans are split on Trump’s handling of issues related to North Korea, with 37 percent approving and 40 percent disapproving. But just 17 percent say he’s making the situation better with his efforts, with 38 percent saying he is making it worse, 14 percent that he’s having little effect, and 31 percent unsure.
The reaction to the “fire and fury” threat is deeply divided along political lines, reflecting the polarization within the U.S. electorate. Eighty-three percent of those who voted for Trump in last year’s election ― but just 11 percent of those who cast ballots for Hillary Clinton ― approve of the president’s remark.
The majority of Americans, 63 percent, consider North Korea an enemy of the U.S. And more than three-quarters say the nation poses at least a somewhat serious threat to the U.S., with 46 percent of these respondents viewing it as a very serious threat. Trump voters, by 21 percentage points, are likelier than Clinton voters to consider North Korea a very serious threat.
Other recent polling has also found Americans worried about both North Korea and Trump’s ability to handle the threats posed by the country.
A CBS poll conducted before Trump’s recent comments found that 61 percent of Americans were uneasy about Trump’s ability to handle the challenge presented by North Korea’s nuclear program, and that only about a quarter were confident the situation would be resolved.
A CNN survey, also taken prior to Trump’s “fire and fury” statement, found that a record 62 percent of Americans considered North Korea a very serious threat, up 14 points since March.
Use the widget below to further explore the results of the HuffPost/YouGov survey, using the menu at the top to select survey questions and the buttons at the bottom to filter the data by subgroups:
The HuffPost/YouGov poll consisted of 1,000 completed interviews conducted Aug. 9 among U.S. adults, using a sample selected from YouGov’s opt-in online panel to match the demographics and other characteristics of the adult U.S. population.
HuffPost has teamed up with YouGov to conduct daily opinion polls. You can learn more about this project and take part in YouGov’s nationally representative opinion polling. More details on the polls’ methodology are available here.
Most surveys report a margin of error that represents some, but not all, potential survey errors. YouGov’s reports include a model-based margin of error, which rests on a specific set of statistical assumptions about the selected sample rather than the standard methodology for random probability sampling. If these assumptions are wrong, the model-based margin of error may also be inaccurate. Click here for a more detailed explanation of the model-based margin of error.