Most Americans would vote against Iran deal, poll finds
Survey published by Fox News shows 58 percent of voters would move to strike down the agreement if they were in Congress
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A majority of Americans would vote to quash the nuclear deal with Iran if they were in Congress, according a survey released over the weekend, with most voters saying they don’t trust Tehran to keep to the terms of the deal.
A full 58 percent of respondents to the poll commissioned and published by Fox News Friday said if they had seats in Congress they would vote against the nuclear deal inked July 14 between Iran and six world powers. Another 31% said they would approve of the deal, and 10% said they didn’t know.
The figures skew closely to previously public opinion polls, which have mostly shown a slight majority of Americans against the accord.
The numbers also track with how Congress is expected to vote, rejecting the deal generally along party lines, though without the supermajority needed to override a promised presidential veto.
The poll was conducted between August 11 and 13 among 1,008 registered voters by phone, with a margin of error of plus/minus three percentage points.
Republicans were most likely to reject a deal by a margin of 83% against to 12% in favor, while 50% of Democrats said they would approve the deal and 35% said they would reject it.
On the question of whether Iran could be trusted to keep to the nuclear pact, 75% of respondents said they could not, while 18% said they could and 6% did not know.
The figure showed a slight uptick from mid-July, when 80% said Iran could not be trusted and 15% said the country could, and in December 2013, when 84% said Tehran would not keep to the deal and only 9% thought it would.
The numbers show the White House’s campaign to sell the deal to a skeptical electorate and lawmakers may be paying some dividends, ahead of Congress’s vote on the issue in mid-September.
However, the survey also found job approval ratings for US President Barack Obama down to 42%, a five point drop from a Fox News survey conducted a month earlier.
A Gallup poll published Thursday showed Obama with a 47% favorable rating, with only a third of the 1,011 respondents saying they approved of his handling of the Iran nuclear deal.
As recently as February, Americans gave Iran the lowest favorable rating of 22 countries, and a strong majority felt Iran’s development of nuclear weapons posed a “critical” threat to the United States, according to Gallup results.
JTA contributed to this report
The Times of Israel Community.