Poll finds opposition to Iran nuclear deal

The majority of Americans familiar with the Iran nuclear deal oppose it, according to a new poll released Tuesday.

Thirty-eight percent of people aware of the nuclear deal approve of it, while 48 percent disapprove, according to the Pew Research Center poll released Tuesday.

{mosads}The poll also finds that majority of Americans do not have significant confidence in Iran’s commitment to the deal or the international community’s ability to monitor Iran’s nuclear program.

There’s also a strong partisan divide over the deal, with 75 percent of Republicans disapproving of the agreement and 59 percent of Democrats supporting it.

The findings differ substantially from a Washington Post/ABC News poll from Monday that found more support for the deal. Fifty nine percent of American adults backed the Iran deal in that poll, compared to 37 percent who did not.  

Pew addressed the conflicting results on its website. While the Post and ABC described the nuclear deal in the run-up to its questions, Pew only asked people that had affirmed they had heard about the deal whether they approved of it based only on what they knew.

“The different findings on public views of the Iran nuclear agreement in the Washington Post/ABC News and Pew Research Center surveys highlight how question wording — and the information provided in a question — can impact public opinion, particularly on issues where public views are still being shaped and information levels are relatively low,” Pew writes.

Both polls both found that Americans lack confidence in the deal. The Post/ABC poll found that 64 percent are not confident the deal will prevent a nuclear Iran.  

The Pew poll questioned 2,002 adults, 79 percent of which who had heard enough about the deal to answer whether they supported it. Those questions had a margin of error of 2.7 percent.

The Post/ABC poll pooled from a random sample of 1,002 adults with a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points.