Americans largely believe the United Nations plays a necessary role in the world, but they remain critical of the organization’s effectiveness, according to a new Gallup poll.
The survey, released Monday ahead of the 80th U.N. General Assembly this week, found that while 60 percent of Americans see the U.N. as necessary — a slight decrease compared with previous polls conducted over the last decade — 63 percent say the U.N. is doing a poor job trying to solve global problems.
Support for the United Nations has been higher in the past; in a 1997 survey, 85 percent of Americans said the global organization played a necessary role in the world.
Still, most Americans support the U.S. government funding the U.N., with 35 percent of respondents wanting to maintain current levels and 25 percent wanting to increase funding. Thirty-seven percent said they favored decreasing funding.
A large majority — 79 percent — believe the U.S. should remain a member of the U.N. But 17 percent believe the U.S. should give up its membership, a tie with the record set in 1996 as the highest in Gallup’s U.N. analysis spanning back decades.
Along party lines, Republicans are historically more likely to view the U.N. as unnecessary compared with Democrats, who generally view it more positively.
Fifty-nine percent of Republican respondents believe the U.N. doesn’t play a necessary role, compared with just 19 percent of Democrats.
And while majorities of Democrats, independents and Republicans all believe the United States should remain a member of the international organization, Republicans were far more likely to say the U.S. should give up its membership. Just 4 percent of Democrats said as much, compared with 17 percent of independents and 36 percent of Republicans.
In his second administration, President Donald Trump has generally called for the U.S. — which funds 22 percent of the U.N. regular budget and is its largest contributor — to back away from international organizations, and has cut international foreign aid.
Trump in February pulled the U.S. from the United Nations Human Rights Council and withdrew from the “woke” United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization in July.
The poll was conducted by telephone interviews from Aug. 1-20 with a random sample of 1,094 American adults. It has a margin of error of plus-or-minus 4 percentage points.
