Despite believing the United States should always promote democracy, most American voters don’t want their military sent to Libya.
A Fox News poll released Thursday found 59 percent of voters think the primary goal of U.S. foreign policy should “always be promoting democracy.”
At the same time, 65 percent oppose the U.S. military getting involved in Libya.
Opposition cuts across party lines. Seven in 10 Democrats (70 percent) and independents (70 percent) oppose it, as do 59 percent of Republicans.
Some 25 percent of voters overall favor taking military action in Libya.
A vote by the U.N. Security Council on a no-fly zone over Libya is expected today.
By a 43-35 percent margin, more voters approve than disapprove of how the Obama administration is dealing with the situation in Libya. The remaining 21 percent are unsure.
Most Democrats (61 percent) approve, while over half of Republicans disapprove (54 percent). Independents are more likely to lean toward approval by 40-35 percent.
One voter in four thinks the goal of U.S. foreign policy should sometimes be supporting governments that are friendly to the United States, even if it means helping a dictatorship (26 percent).
Click here for the poll's full results.
The Fox News poll is based on landline and cell phone interviews with 913 randomly chosen registered voters nationwide and was conducted under the joint direction of Anderson Robbins Research (D) and Shaw & Company Research (R) from March 14 to March 16. For the total sample, it has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.