Credit goes to the pollsters behind the Economist/YouGov poll for creating what may be the most revelatory poll question of the decade. In a poll conducted March 20-23, they asked 1,665 U.S. adult citizens, “Do you think the U.S. should be the dominant power in the western hemisphere?” While a plurality (45%) of Americans said “yes,” a majority (57%) of liberals said “no.” That disagreement explains most of America’s foreign policy steps and missteps of this century.

The unavoidable background to this question is that, whether anyone approves or not, the U.S. is and has always been the dominant power in the Western Hemisphere. The United States was the earliest nation in the Western Hemisphere to gain independence, and it has become the most populous, most productive, and most technologically advanced. (Apart from the Arctic wilderness of Canada, it is also the largest.)

Thus, the “should” question does not arise in a vacuum. It entails an implicit judgment on America’s past and current status as a regional power and a position on the conduct of U.S. foreign policy going forward.

Hence, the dramatic ideological and partisan divide among respondents. Among self-described liberals, only 21% said yes, the U.S. should be a dominant power in the Western Hemisphere, while 57% said no (22% were unsure). Among self-described conservatives, 73% said yes, while only 10% said no (with 17% unsure). The results were similar for Democrats (26% yes, 49% no, 25% unsure) versus Republicans (74% yes, 8% no, 18% unsure) and 2024 Harris voters (29% yes, 48% no, 23% unsure) versus 2024 Trump voters (74% yes, 9% no, 16% unsure).

Americans fell between the partisan positions, but they expressed support for the statement by nearly a two-to-one margin (45% yes, 27% no, 25% unsure). Ideological moderates (45% yes, 25% no, 30% unsure) and political Independents (37% yes, 33% no, 30% unsure) were similar.

An interesting pattern in these results is that demographics more likely to answer “no” to whether the U.S. should be a dominant power in the Western Hemisphere are also more likely to be unsure. This could suggest that some people who answered “no” simply have not thought deeply about the question and supposed the researchers wanted them to give a negative answer.

The same “no”/“not sure” correlation roughly holds across non-political demographics as well, including:

• Males (yes 54%, no 27%, unsure 19%) and females (yes 37%, no 33%, unsure 31%);
• Whites (yes 50%, no 25%, unsure 25%), blacks (yes 24%, no 46%, unsure 29%), and Hispanics (yes 45%, no 34%, unsure 21%); and
• 18-29-year-olds (yes 30%, no 37%, unsure 33%), 30-44-year-olds (yes 45%, no 32%, unsure 23%), 45-64-year-olds (yes 49%, no 26%, unsure 25%), and those 65 and older (yes 54%, no 27%, unsure 19%).

The demographics most likely to answer the question negatively (blacks, women, and younger adults) are also more likely to support Democrats.

Interestingly, the poll showed no difference in opinion between adults with a college degree (yes 45%, no 31%, unsure 23%) versus those without one (yes 45%, no 29%, unsure 25%). Even without a partisan divide, one would have expected to see at least a bit of difference one way or the other, and it’s unclear why this is not the case.

The question, “Do you think the U.S. should be the dominant power in the western hemisphere,” appears to be a brand-new one in YouGov polling. Attempts to locate an earlier use of the question yielded no results, and a search of YouGov’s own archive yielded only results for the most recent poll, released March 23, 2026.

The timing of the survey question comes as President Donald Trump continues to exercise his forceful foreign policy, which has so far involved imposing worldwide tariffs to negotiate better trade deals, elbowing a Chinese company out of the Panama Canal, gunning down drug boats in the Caribbean, the capture of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, and both a surgical assault and a massive aerial campaign against Iran — not to mention playing a role in brokering half a dozen ceasefire agreements.

President Trump’s forceful display of America’s economic and military might has disquieted some Americans, but mostly those with a predisposition to criticize everything the president does. The close association with President Trump likely plays a role in the partisan and ideological divide on the survey question. Yet the divide also shows a troubling lack of commitment among progressives to a principle that has defined U.S. foreign policy for more than 200 years.

That principle is the Monroe Doctrine, first articulated by the fifth President James Monroe, in his December 2, 1823 address to Congress. In the address, President Monroe announced his policy to “consider any attempt on their [European powers’] part to extend their system [of monarchy or colonization] to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety.” While the U.S. would not interfere with existing colonies, it would protect “the Governments who have declared their independence and maintained it” — most recently a swath of South America — from foreign domination.

From that point onward, the U.S. has been a protector of all nations in the Western Hemisphere, for the very sound reason that doing so keeps would-be foreign adversaries much further from our own shores. The Monroe Doctrine was invoked for such purposes as supporting an elected Mexican president against a Mexican emperor established by France in 1865, and blockading Cuba until the Soviet Union withdrew its missile launchers in 1962. At the turn of the century, President Theodore Roosevelt established a corollary to the Monroe Doctrine that the U.S. would even act as a policeman in the hemisphere, enforcing good behavior as a means to prevent foreign meddling.

This is the foreign policy survey respondents likely had in mind when they said, “yes,” the U.S. should be the dominant power in the Western Hemisphere.

Perhaps that consensus is beginning to change. On January 8, 2026, the New York Post ran a cover titled, “The Donroe Doctrine: Trump’s Vision for Hemisphere.” The map showed Trump’s rhetorical designs on Panama, Greenland, and Canada. The administration and its backers have since embraced the phrase to describe Trump’s foreign policy as a forceful return to a longstanding American tradition. But Trump critics in equal measure are likely to oppose anything with his name attached.

As the Eurasia Group described it, “President Donald Trump’s administration is reviving and reinterpreting the logic of the Monroe Doctrine in its effort to assert power over the Western Hemisphere. … Trump’s version broadens the concept. It?seeks?not just to limit China, Russia, and Iran in the Western Hemisphere, but to actively assert American primacy through a mix of military pressure, economic coercion, selective alliance-building, and Trump's personal score-settling.” Well, at least now you know how they would answer the question.

A final caution is in order. A well-known variable in public opinion polling is that the form of the question can exert great influence on the answers given. The YouGov wording, for instance, “Do you think the U.S. should be the dominant power in the western hemisphere,” centers the question on the United States. This prompts respondents to consider recent actions taken by the Trump administration.

This is not the only way to ask the question. Polltakers could have asked, “Which country should be the dominant power in the Western Hemisphere?” That would likely have resulted in far more Americans naming their own country, as opposed to other global powers and U.S. competitors, such as China. This is likely the question conservatives imagined they were answering.

Alternatively, pollsters could have asked, “Should there be a dominant country in the Western Hemisphere?” This is quite a different question, and likely the one liberals imagined they were answering. Progressives — especially those who see America as a fundamentally flawed nation — are likely to eschew a role of American leadership in international relations, except in a first-among-equals sense. The quest to retreat America from its dominant position both in our own hemisphere and on the global stage infused the Biden and Obama administrations

By contrast, the Trump administration believes that America is the 900-pound gorilla in the room. Furthermore, they believe that America should act like it, or else we only embolden our adversaries to trample our turf and spread their own authoritarian practices into our territory. That is the fundamental foreign policy divide of this moment, and YouGov’s poll question has illuminated it, even if the question may have been better in a different form.