How popular is the Iran War?

We're tracking how the American public feels about the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.

🕒 The latest on the Iran War’s popularity

Updated March 25, 2026

It’s been nearly a month since the Iran War began and there’s still no obvious end in sight. The Trump administration recently sent Iran a 15-point peace plan, but it’s unclear if those talks will go anywhere. In the meantime, the U.S. is still sending more troops to the Middle East.

Donald Trump didn’t see the usual “rally-around-the-flag” boost to his approval ratings when the war started, and now, his net approval rating in our average is at a second-term low of -16.7. But, to track how Americans’ views of the conflict itself have changed, we’ve launched an Iran War polling average. We’ve collected polls that asked about support for the war since it began, and we’ll continue to update this page daily until the war ends.

The war has been unpopular since its outset (unless you’re a MAGA voter). Support for the war locked in quickly and has been steady at about 40 percent since the start of the conflict. However, opposition to the war has increased from about 48 percent to 52 percent. -EMD, 3/25/26

See also: Generic congressional ballot dashboard and Donald Trump approval rating dashboard.

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This is our landing page for polls about the Iran War¹, tracking support for U.S. military action in Iran since March 1, the day after the war began.² We’ll regularly update this average as new polls come in.³ This page is designed to be viewed on the web rather than in our email client or the Substack app.

Click here for more information on how the average works. The Silver Bulletin average weights more reliable polls more heavily — you can find our latest pollster ratings here. Our process for calculating support for the Iran War is similar to that for calculating President Trump’s approval ratings.⁴

The topline: So, just how popular is the Iran War?

This average includes polls that ask about support for the Iran War, strikes in Iran, or U.S. military involvement in Iran. Compared with tracking approval ratings, questions about war can be less straightforward. Our goal is to limit the analysis to polls that ask neutral questions rather than introduce assumptions about how the war is going or its objectives. (See below for more details on how we make this assessment.) Our default version of the ratings reflects a combination of all polls, whether conducted among adults, registered voters, or likely voters.⁵

The polls: What do the surveys say?

You can see all the numbers for each poll that feeds into our average below. You can also click here to download all the Iran War numbers.

We exclude questions that:

1. Make presumptions about the reasons for or against the war and/or offer an assessment about whether these objectives have been met (even if respondents are offered arguments on both sides);

2. Ask how the war is going relative to the respondent’s expectations (i.e., “Is the war going too far”?);

3. Ask about President Trump’s approval on Iran, as opposed to support for the overall war operation⁶, or;

4. Ask about some particular aspect of the war (e.g. targeting nuclear facilities) rather than the overall situation.

Also, in line with longstanding Silver Bulletin policy, surveys that fail to provide the specific question wording or other key details about the poll (dates, sample frame, sample size) can’t be included.

Polls are adjusted for house effects (i.e. persistent differences between a pollster’s findings on the war and the consensus) and are weighted based on each firm’s pollster rating and the poll’s sample size and recency. The “influence” score in the table below shows the relative importance of a poll in our current average given these considerations.⁷ In practice, recency is often more important than the other factors in our weights.

This is a free feature, but it requires work to update and maintain. We very much appreciate your support of Silver Bulletin via paid or free subscriptions.

1. As described here, our house style is to capitalize the “W” in Iran War.

2. That is, all of these questions postdate the start of the war on Feb. 28; we don’t include hypothetical questions before the war was underway. We begin our average on March 1 because only one poll was completed on the 28th itself. If you notice any bugs in the charts or missing polls, just shoot Eli a message and he’ll get them fixed as quickly as possible.

3. We’ll suspend the updates if the Iran War ends and pollsters stop asking about the conflict.

4. Because pollsters have been asking questions about the war frequently, we apply the more aggressive settings that we use for our Trump approval tracker rather than the more conservative ones used in, for example, our Elon Musk favorability ratings.

5. However, if a pollster releases multiple versions of the same survey, our hierarchy is all adults > registered voters > likely voters. That is, we prefer the broadest sample frame as we’re interested in how all Americans feel about the war.

6. We’ll admit this is a fussy distinction, but it’s fine for Trump to be mentioned in the preamble to the question so long as he isn’t the subject of the question. So, for example, “Do you approve or disapprove of the Trump administration’s decision to take U.S. military action against Iran?” is included, but “Do you approve or disapprove of President Trump’s handling of Iran” is not.

7. The influence score also reduces the weight on any one survey if a particular firm has polled about the war frequently. Such a firm may still have a lot of influence on the average, but essentially this weight is divided among the various recent polls it has conducted.