Do Americans Support US Action in Venezuela? Media Offer Conflicting Reports

After the Trump administration captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and imposed partial leadership over the country, pollsters began collecting data on how Americans feel about foreign military intervention. Resulting reports from Associated Press (Left bias) and New York Post (Lean Right) offer completely opposing results.

The Details: While Associated Press stated, "More than half of US adults believe President Donald Trump has 'gone too far' in using the US military to intervene in other countries," New York Post conversely reported, "A solid majority of Americans support military intervention in Venezuela." 

AP Report: The AP report, based on an AP-NORC poll of 1,203 US adults from Jan. 8-11, also found that "majorities disapprove of how the Republican president is handling foreign policy in general and Venezuela in particular." However, the outlet later noted that, "About half of Americans believe the US intervening in Venezuela will be 'mostly a good thing' for halting the flow of illegal drugs into the country." The poll's margin of error was reported to be plus or minus 3.9 percentage points.

NYP Report: The "solid majority" of supporters in the NYP report, based on a Morning Consult survey of 2,202 Americans from Jan. 10-11, were "informed that [Venezuela is] a hub of narco-terrorism with ties to Iran and Hezbollah." The outlet highlighted that "an eye-popping 66% of Hispanics" supported US military intervention and found "sixty percent of respondents said they were more likely to support intervention." However, it later noted that less than half – about 45% – "said they agreed US energy producers could boost oil production." The poll's margin of error was reported to be plus or minus 2 percentage points.

Why The Difference: The Morning Consult poll had a smaller margin of error and double the respondents of the AP-NORC poll, which may have contributed to the staunch discrepancies. However, the Consult notably framed Venezuela negatively to respondents. The polls also asked slightly different questions, with AP-NORC's being less specific to Venezuela alone. Both the AP and NYP reports exhibited bias beyond just their choice of polls on which to report, particularly by placing points unaligned with their biases lower in their coverage.

RELATED: How Do Venezuelans Feel About Maduro's Capture? | AllSides

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