In a survey taken for the liberal group Americans United for Change and conducted by the firm Hart Research, a 34-percent plurality of respondents who had heard at least “a little” about the deal said they favor the White House arrangement with Iran. A total of 22 percent said they oppose the deal and 41 percent said they had no opinion or didn’t know enough to answer.
After hearing a clinically worded description of the deal, a full 63 percent of respondents favored the deal.
The survey, which tested 800 voters from Nov. 26 to Dec. 1 — but did not include calls on Thanksgiving and the day after — may bolster the case President Barack Obama and his allies will make to Congress, as they ask the legislature to hold off on placing new sanctions on Iran as the administration seeks to make the Iran deal work.
Democratic pollster Geoff Garin, who conducted the survey, said, “Americans do not want to get involved in another war in the Middle East.”
Offered a choice between two congressional approaches to the Iran deal, 68 percent of voters said they would prefer to see Congress “closely monitor” the implementation without taking “any action that would block the agreement.” Twenty-one percent of voters said Congress should pass new Iran sanctions “even if doing so would break the agreement … or might jeopardize the negotiations.”
In a sign of the country’s continuing war weariness, only 27 percent of respondents said they would take a favorable view of a lawmaker who backed “military action against Iran to destroy its nuclear development program.” Fifty-two percent said they would take a somewhat unfavorable or strongly unfavorable view of such a position.
And two thirds of respondents said they would prefer a member of Congress who “wants to give the new agreement and further negotiations a chance,” as opposed to 25 percent who’d rather support a lawmaker who wants to hand down new sanctions at the risk of undermining negotiations.
Garin maintained: “The clear majority of voters do not want Congress to impose more sanctions at this point if doing so might jeopardize the agreement and ongoing negotiations.”
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