Vast number of Trump voters want him to declare victory and get out

The cracks are beginning to show in President Donald Trump’s base over his war in Iran.

According to a new poll of Trump 2024 voters commissioned by the Quincy Institute (which publishes Responsible Statecraft) and the American Conservative, and conducted by Ipsos from March 12-14, 79% say they would prefer the president declare victory and get out of the war now.

“While Trump voters by and large stand behind Trump, they overwhelmingly want him to declare an end to the war,” said Trita Parsi, Executive Vice President of the Quincy Institute. “Trump risks losing significant portions of his base if he escalates the war with ground troops and allows the war to further push up gas prices.”

Furthermore, while 76% say they support Trump’s decision to take the country to war, that’s down from polling shortly after the first airstrikes on Feb. 28, including a Fox News survey that had Republicans supporting the war at 84%. In the QI/TAC poll, some 24% of respondents who told Ipsos that they had voted for Trump in the last election, said they now oppose the war.

Young voters are driving much of the rising opposition to the war among the president’s base. According to the breakdown, only 54% of the 18-29 year-old bracket of Trump voters support the war while 46% oppose. It’s just a little higher among 30-49 year-olds, with 63% supporting, 37% opposing. Clearly Trump is getting most of the wind beneath his war wings from the Fox News audience, which trends older, with ages 50-65+ supporting the war at 86%.

Of course, because Democrats are vastly more likely to oppose Trump’s decision to take the country to war, recent polling of all adults reflects a much bleaker picture. A new Quinnipiac Poll has 53% of Americans surveyed opposing the war and only 40% supporting it. In that poll, taken March 9, Republicans were 84% in support.

It is not hard to assess, especially as one drills down deeper into the QI/TAC numbers, that talk of putting American boots on the ground and rising prices at the fuel pump may have something to do with the softening of Trump’s core support for this war.

According to the survey, 55% of Trump voters are worried about rising gas prices as a result of the conflict, while 58% say they oppose Trump sending ground troops into the fray.

Headlines relating to regional and global impacts have been less than hopeful. At the time of this writing, shipping is barely moving through the Strait of Hormuz, affecting 20% of the world’s oil market. And despite over 15,000 U.S. and Israeli airstrikes on Iran, the regime in Tehran has been able to disrupt not only shipping and energy, but air travel and daily life in neighboring countries with asymmetric attacks on military bases and other infrastructure.

In addition, the killing of top Iranian government officials, including Ali Larijani, the powerful secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, which was confirmed Tuesday, has not led to a capitulation of the regime.

That Republicans would be willing to accept a “mission accomplished” now, before the ostensible goals of the Operation Epic Fury are fulfilled — regime change being one of them — shows they too, have their limits. Economic recession and the prospects of American men and women coming back to Dover Air Force base in flag-draped coffins are weighing hard, say observers.

“The Republican base is clearly willing to trust President Trump up to a point but remain weary of any potential escalation,” said Saagar Enjeti, conservative host of the popular Breaking Points podcast, when shown the QI/TAC poll results. “As evidenced by this polling the wisest move would be to declare victory and end this immediately.”

The fissures in support have been observable since the 12-day war in June. Online disputes have broken out among conservative voices in opposition to intervention like Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greene, and die-hard war supporters, including Mark Levin and Ben Shapiro. They say war critics are in an isolated minority, but eyebrows were raised on Tuesday when Joe Kent, a Republican, Iraq War veteran, and big Trump supporter, resigned his position as director of the National Counterterrorism Center over the war. He said he could not “in good conscience” support it and “cannot support sending the next generation off to fight and die in a war that serves no benefit to the American people nor justifies the cost of American lives.”

Kent is the highest-profile MAGA defection from the Trump war policy and likely not the last.

The QI/TAC poll shows that “Trump has a short window of opportunity to end the war without paying much of a political cost,” said Parsi. “But he risks turning his base against himself if he lets this war drag on and if he deploys ground troops in Iran.”