Eighty percent of likely U.S. voters have an unfavorable opinion of Russian leader Vladimir Putin, up sharply from just 52 percent who felt that way when he was seeking a second term as president in 2011, according to a Rasmussen Reports poll released on Monday.
However, only 29 percent of voters think Russia under Putin is more of a threat to the United States than the Soviet Union was during the Cold War, while 28 percent say Russia is less of a danger. Another 37 percent feel the threat is about the same.
Other results from the survey show:
- When Putin praised Donald Trump during the election campaign, 72 percent of Americans had an unfavorable opinion of the Russian leader.
- In the latest poll, 55 percent have a very unfavorable impression of Putin, while just 12 percent share a favorable opinion of him and 2 percent a very favorable opinion.
- Forty-one percent of Democrats say Russia under Putin is more of a threat to the United States than the Soviet Union was during the Cold War, while 21 percent of Republicans and 23 percent of independent voters feel that way.
- Forty-five percent of all voters consider Russia an enemy of the United States, and they are not confident that ties with Moscow will be better a year from now.
- Although Trump said last month that relations with Russia were at an all-time low, 49 percent of voters said it was possible for the two nations to work together in areas of common concern.
- At the time of Rex Tillerson’s nomination as Trump’s secretary of state, only 19 percent considered his business connections to Russia and Putin as ExxonMobil CEO as good for the United States, while 46 percent said those ties were bad for the U.S., 19 percent said they would have no impact and 16 percent were not sure.
The survey of 1,000 likely voters was conducted on May 3-4. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95 percent level of confidence.