More than half of Americans are not happy with the way President Donald Trump is deploying the military to several major U.S. cities, according to a new poll.

In a Reuters/Ipsos poll released Oct. 8, 58% said the president should only send armed troops to face external threats. Along party lines, disagreement with the use of armed forces for domestic policing was even starker: Seven in 10 Democrats and half of Republicans said the military should only be used for external threats.

The survey comes as Democratic leaders wage a legal battle against the administration over Trump's attempts to deploy soldiers in American cities, and as hundreds of National Guard troops arrived at an army base outside Chicago. Over the last few months, Trump has pushed forward in deploying the National Guard to cities led by Democrats, claiming that bringing in the military was a necessary step toward addressing what his administration has characterized as rampant crime and immigration violations.

Guard members previously hit the streets of Los Angeles and Washington, DC, and troops are expected in Chicago this week, despite strenuous objections from Illinois Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker. Portland, Oregon, and Memphis, Tennessee, are also in Trump's sights as he continues his campaign of using military forces to police American cities.

Polling finds majority of Americans not on board with troops in US cities

The four-day poll found 48% of respondents took issue with presidents, regardless of their political party, deploying troops into states even when state governors objected. Another 37% said presidents should have the power to deploy troops under these circumstances. Republicans were in most support, with seven in 10 agreeing that presidents should have the power to send troops into states, while only 13% of Democrats took a similar position.

Some 83% of respondents said the military "should remain politically neutral and not take a side in domestic policy debates." Ten percent said the armed forces should start taking sides and support the president's domestic policy agenda. About 1 in 5 Republicans said the military should take the president's side in political debates.

The online poll was conducted from Oct. 3 to 7, days after Trump attended a rare meeting of hundreds of U.S. generals and admirals summoned from around the world to Virginia and said that the nation faced an "enemy within."

The poll surveyed 1,154 U.S. adults nationwide and has a margin of error of 3 percentage points.

In a separate two-day national poll conducted last week by CBS News/YouGov, views on National Guard deployments were similarly unpopular yet widely divisive among the two parties. In the poll, which ran from Oct. 1 to 3, 58% of respondents said they opposed sending National Guard troops to U.S. cities, while 42% favored the moves.

An even larger proportion, 61%, said Trump should not deploy active-duty troops to cities and 39% said he should. Yet when the responses are broken down by party, it's clear Republicans are the major source of support for the deployments, with nearly eight in 10 saying Trump should deploy active military troops to the streets of American cities. Democrats are in opposition by an even larger percentage: 92% said the president should not send active troops to cities.

The CBS News/YouGov survey included a nationally representative sample of 2,441 U.S. adults and has a margin of error of ±2.3 percentage points.

What is Trump's approval rating?

The unease over Trump's increasing mobilization of the National Guard to address crime in several of the nation's largest cities isn't helping his approval ratings, and it contributes in part to a one-point drop since the Reuters/Ipsos poll's September survey.

Approval for the president stood at 40% in the latest poll, compared to a 41% approval last month. Another 58% disapprove of his job performance, with attitudes slipping on his stance on crime and his handling of the cost of living.

The New York Times' most recent polling averages put Trump at a 43% approval and 54% disapproval as of Oct. 8, rates that have largely remained steady for the last few months.

The RealClearPolitics polling average stands a few points higher, with an average approval of 45% and a 52% disapproval, also as of Oct. 8.

Contributing: Reuters.

Kathryn Palmer is a politics reporter for USA TODAY. You can reach her at kapalmer@usatoday.com and on X @KathrynPlmr.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Most Americans oppose Trump's National Guard deployments, poll finds

Reporting by Kathryn Palmer, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

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