Polls Show Waning GOP Support for Ukraine Aid

Republican voters want Joe Biden to take a tougher line on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — but they’re also concerned that his administration’s policy is going too far.

That’s the takeaway from some new polling, coinciding both with the intensifying GOP presidential primary race and with reports that the Biden administration plans to seek congressional approval of a new Ukraine-aid funding package. Up to this point, Congress has approved several tranches of funding, totaling a bit over $100 billion, to support Kyiv, but the high intensity of combat involved in the Ukrainian military’s counteroffensive means that matériel provided up to now is wearing thin.

One survey, commissioned by CNN and carried out by SSRS, found declining U.S. support for continued assistance to Ukraine overall, with 55 percent of respondents saying that Congress should not pass another aid package and 45 percent favoring more aid.

The partisan split, however, indicates that Republican opposition to authorizing further assistance to Ukraine is what put that number over 50 percent. Seventy-one percent of Republican respondents told SSRS that they oppose further assistance. Meanwhile, 62 percent of Democrats are supportive of more funding.

That result is broadly in line with a Manhattan Institute poll of GOP voters in Iowa, South Carolina, and New Hampshire.

In each of the early primary states, a plurality of Republicans believe that the Biden administration is doing too much to support Ukraine: 45 percent of Republicans in Iowa, 42 percent in South Carolina, and 42 percent in New Hampshire. In each of those states, a bit over 20 percent of respondents said that the current level of support is “about right,” while just over 20 percent of the group surveyed said that the administration is doing too little.

But the Manhattan Institute poll also found that majorities of voters in those states also believe that the Biden administration is “not tough enough on Russia” (62 percent in Iowa, 63 percent in South Carolina, and 54 percent in New Hampshire). Responses to another question indicate that, if most GOP voters don’t want to continue to send aid to Ukraine, it’s not because they view Russia’s actions favorably: Over two-third of voters in each of those states said they believe that Vladimir Putin is a war criminal.

Most importantly, the polling on this issue reflects the limited — and shrinking — political space within which Republican candidates and congressional leaders might be operating.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is clear-eyed about the need to respond to threats posed by Russia and China, going so far as to admonish a staffer from a Russian propaganda outlet during a press conference in Israel. And senior House Republicans are broadly supportive of a policy to bolster Ukraine’s military that is more assertive than the one Biden is pursuing. But McCarthy has also spoken out against the Senate’s plans to advance a supplemental funding package that would include more aid to Ukraine, citing the terms of the deal on spending he struck with GOP firebrands to secure the speakership. And the number of lawmakers who oppose Ukraine supplemental aid packages — it was 57 House members in May 2022 — is likely to grow as the White House submits its next funding request.

But the polling results also show that there’s still an opportunity for conservative proponents of continued U.S. assistance to make their case to the public. It will be incumbent on them to continue to explain why that’s necessary — and to redouble their efforts through the end of this year and into 2024.