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NBC Poll: Americans Support Sending More Ground Troops to Fight Islamic State

November 18, 2015

A new NBC News poll showed that more Americans support sending more troops to fight the Islamic State (IS), Meet the Press Daily reported Wednesday. The poll was conducted between November 12 and November 15.

Roughly two-thirds of the country (65 percent) want more troops on the ground in Iraq and Syria to combat IS, which took responsibility for the attacks in Paris, France, last week that killed more than 120 people. When broken down by political party, a majority of Republicans, Democrats, and two-thirds of independents agree on sending more troops to combat the terrorist group.

President Obama had previously said that putting troops on the ground would be a mistake and stood by his current strategy on fighting IS.

Since the spring a majority of Americans, 53 percent, feel the the United State government is not doing enough to eradicate the threat of terrorism, which is up from 37 percent in April. Meet the Press Daily's Chuck Todd said that the number was not surprising given the amount of coverage of the recent Paris terrorist attacks.

Fifty-four percent of Americans fear that a member of the family will become a victim of a terrorist attack, whereas 44 percent said that they were not worried. The Gallup poll that asked the same question had an average of 49 percent.

Another striking number to come out of the poll was that 70 percent of Americans said that they think that U.S. and its allies are losing the fight against IS. Todd added that the numbers are not surprising based off the amount of coverage and the string of terrorist attacks that took place in a three-week period.