It’s been a week. But aren’t they all at this point?

Unless you’ve been living under a rock the past week, you’ve probably heard about how President Biden announced in April he would withdraw troops from Afghanistan by September 11th to end our two decade war. In recent weeks, Taliban forces have captured cities and taken control of the capital — and Republicans have predictably pounced with criticism and xenophobia. But you might not be shocked to know that voters disagree with them.

This week, we released new polling that shows that despite this, voters still strongly support President Biden’s decision to withdraw from Afghanistan. Voters support the decision to withdraw by a 14-point margin, including Democrats by a 51-point margin, Independents by a 13-point margin, and nearly a third of Republicans.

Voters also support speeding up the process of providing Afghans who have worked with American forces, like interpreters, with special immigrant visas to come to the United States. Voters support this proposal by a 25-point margin, including Democrats by a 40-point margin, Independents by a 27-point margin, and Republicans by a 4-point margin.

Though Biden is doing the right thing by withdrawing from Afghanistan, it’s important that we go further. As DFP Senior Fellow Elizabeth Beavers outlined in her recent blog on our website, “The takeaway must not be that this is why we must maintain our sprawling military presence throughout the world. To the contrary — this should be evidence for why we must work quickly to dismantle ALL remaining relics of the failed “War on Terror,” and abandon the faulty foundation on which it is built.”

Read Elizabeth’s blog here and our new polling here.

Support Our Work

Seriously, time in politics lately feels like a flat circle. Here are some highlights from DFP from just the past week:

Most voters support vaccine and mask mandates as Delta rages on

With the coronavirus continuing to spread across the country and vaccine disinformation seeding further into discourse, our recent polling shows that a majority of Americans favor requiring proof of vaccination for entry into every indoor space we tested. Take a look:

We also found strong support across party lines for mask mandates.

Voters believe that if you pollute, you pay

Wildfires and heat waves, flash floods and hurricanes — we seem to jump from one climate disaster to the next in this country. And despite what gas and oil companies want to convince you to believe, it isn’t too late to resist this crisis. Our latest polling finds that over three-quarters of likely voters (77 percent) think these fossil fuel companies have a responsibility to address climate change.

By a 40-point margin, likely voters support a $500 billion fee on major fossil fuel companies that would compensate for their contributions to climate change, too.

Read the full poll here.

An orange jumpsuit for Cuomo? New York voters say yes.

Governor Andrew Cuomo announced that he would be stepping down following the allegations of sexual harassment levied against him and the Attorney General investigation that confirmed the allegations. Our polling finds that a majority of voters support Cuomo being charged with a crime as a result of his actions by a 23-point margin.

Price check: Voters support lowering the Medicare eligibility age AND prescription drug prices

As the coronavirus pandemic has shown us, there are many disparities in healthcare coverage in the United States — and one of the best ways to close these gaps would be expanding Medicare by lowering the eligibility age and the cost of prescription drugs. Our latest polling shows that voters strongly support both of these proposals. Voters want to lower the eligibility threshold from 65 to 60 by a 25-point margin. Voters also said that they would be more likely to support a Senate candidate that supported lowering prices for prescription drugs by allowing Medicare to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies, like private insurance companies do, by a 60-point margin.