Americans on the Middle East: A Study of American Public Opinion

Abstract

In mid-September 2012, attacks on US diplomatic missions in Libya and Egypt—countries going through revolutionary processes that began with the Arab Spring—shocked Americans in the midst of a closely fought presidential campaign. The very different governments of Libya and Egypt, both new and untested, had to formulate responses to the attacks, which immediately fed in to the American political process. These are the results of a poll conducted by the University of Maryland’s Anwar Sadat Chair and the Program on International Policy Attitudes to learn what have been the American public’s first impressions of these events, and how attitudes on other issues in the region may have changed.