Asked ten questions about the US war with Iran, most respondents to the Advocates' Iran War Survey chose restraint every time. On each question, a majority of the 2,129 people who took part rejected the hawkish answer. The closest call was the killing of Iran's Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, where 53 percent chose an answer other than calling him a legitimate target. The widest margin came on the Strait of Hormuz, where 75 percent rejected keeping it open by US naval force.
A simple tally of answers hides that result. Each question offered three answers, one for each of three political philosophies. The Conservative answer was the hawkish one every time. The Progressive and Libertarian answers both argued against military action, for different reasons. So the hawkish vote went to one answer while the restraint vote divided between two. Counted answer by answer, the Conservative option came first on six questions. Counted by what respondents supported, restraint led on all ten.
Iran War Survey · All Respondents · N = 2,129
Restraint Won Every Question
Share choosing the hawkish (Conservative) answer versus either restraint answer (Libertarian or Progressive), and how the restraint vote divided. Percentages are rounded.
In the restraint bar, the first segment is the Libertarian answer (limits on government power) and the second the Progressive answer (international law), each in its philosophy's color. A majority rejected the hawkish answer on all ten questions; the narrowest was Q2 (53%), the widest Q6 (75%).
Two different reasons to say no
The Progressive answers rested on international law and humanitarian accountability. The Libertarian answers rested on limits to government power: no government, including our own, has legitimate authority to wage wars of choice. Which argument respondents preferred depended on the question.
On wartime surveillance, three of every four respondents who rejected the hawkish answer chose the Libertarian one: "Wartime emergencies are how lasting expansions of government power are created and never reversed." The same reasoning carried the Strait of Hormuz (68 percent of the restraint vote) and the terms for ending the war (61 percent), where the Libertarian answer said the US "should end this and come home."
On a naval blockade, restraint voters went the other way, preferring the Progressive answer by more than two to one: a blockade "starves civilian economies and constitutes an act of war under international law." The Progressive case also had the edge on civilian casualties and on the US-Israel alliance.
Iran War Survey · All Respondents · N = 2,129
How Every Question Broke Down
Share choosing each philosophy's answer across all ten questions.
The Conservative option takes the plurality on six questions, the Libertarian option on three (Q6, Q8, Q9), and the Progressive option on one (Q4). Q9, wartime surveillance, is the most lopsided at 52% Libertarian.
Where the hawkish answer was strongest
The hawkish answer came closest to a majority on three questions: the killing of Khamenei (47 percent), a naval blockade (45 percent) and the terms for ending the war (43 percent), where it read "No deal until Iran verifiably dismantles its nuclear program and reopens the Strait of Hormuz." The two strongest describe force as targeted or limited. The blockade answer called it "a legitimate non-lethal pressure tool."
Open-ended commitments drew less support. Only 39 percent said ground troops "may be necessary," and only 35 percent backed regime change as a stated goal.
Where respondents landed
Iran War Survey · 2,129 Respondents · 2026-05-29 → 2026-10-03
Where Do Respondents Actually Land?
Every dot is one respondent plotted by their scored coordinates on the Nolan Chart. The horizontal axis runs from Progressive (left) to Conservative (right); the vertical axis from Authoritarian (bottom) to Libertarian (top).
Scored across all ten answers, 724 respondents (34.0 percent) came out Conservative, 558 (26.2 percent) Libertarian, 455 (21.4 percent) Progressive and 392 (18.4 percent) Moderate. Conservative is the largest single result for the same reason the hawkish answer often led the tally: hawkish answers concentrate in one type, while restraint answers are divided between two.
The most crowded point on the chart is the top of the Conservative corner, where 185 respondents (8.7 percent) chose the hawkish answer on every question. A larger group is harder to see. 664 respondents (31 percent) chose no hawkish answer at all, but because they mixed Libertarian and Progressive answers, they are spread across many points on the chart. Overall, 61 percent chose the hawkish answer four times or fewer, and 36 percent chose it six times or more.
What people call themselves, and how they answered
Iran War Survey · 2,129 Respondents
Labels vs. Scored Results
How each self-identified group actually scored across the four political types. Only self-identified Conservatives mostly kept their own label.
Self-Reported Identity → Survey Classification
The survey also asked respondents how they describe their own politics. Self-identified Conservatives were the most hawkish group: 76 percent scored Conservative. Even so, 77 percent of them chose at least one restraint answer, and only 114 of 498 chose the hawkish answer on all ten. More than a third (37 percent) picked the Libertarian answer on wartime surveillance, and 46 percent rejected holding the Strait of Hormuz by force.
Self-identified Progressives often reached for the Libertarian argument. On the Strait of Hormuz they chose the Libertarian answer over the Progressive one by 62 percent to 33 percent. They also preferred it, narrowly, on wartime surveillance (47 percent to 43 percent), regime change (48 percent to 44 percent) and the killing of Khamenei (44 percent to 42 percent). One in four self-identified Progressives scored Libertarian overall.
Self-identified Moderates were split almost evenly across the four results, and 67 percent of them chose restraint on most questions.
Of the 369 self-identified Libertarians, 45 percent scored Libertarian and 28 percent scored Conservative. They gave the Libertarian answer its strongest support on surveillance, at 71 percent. The exception was Khamenei: 44 percent chose the answer calling him a legitimate target, the only question where the hawkish answer led among them.
Self-ID Libertarians · n=369 · Iran War Survey
The Anti-Statist Reflex Holds on War
Answers from the 369 respondents who self-identified as Libertarian. The Libertarian answer led or tied on eight of the ten questions; the lone exception where the hawkish answer led was the killing of Khamenei.
Another Answer Led — 2 Questions
Libertarian Answer Led or Tied — 8 Questions
Who leaned toward restraint
Women leaned toward restraint more than men: 70 percent of women chose the restraint answer on most questions, compared with 57 percent of men. Respondents under 45 did so more often than those 60 and older, 66 percent to 55 percent. Both gaps are statistically significant.
What this means
Debates about war are usually framed as two sides, hawks against doves, right against left. These respondents did not divide that way. A majority rejected the hawkish answer on every question, and that majority drew on two different traditions.
The two traditions disagree about the reason. One looks to international law and institutions to restrain force. The other distrusts concentrated power itself, whoever holds it. On most questions those reasons led to the same place, and on one they converged. The single answer chosen most often in the entire survey, by 1,102 respondents, was the Libertarian answer on surveillance: emergencies create powers that are never given back. It drew more than a third of self-identified Conservatives and nearly half of self-identified Progressives.
That is an old observation. In 1918 the writer Randolph Bourne put it in a single line: "War is the health of the State." Power gathered to fight abroad tends to stay at home. Respondents across the spectrum seem to sense it, even when they disagree about everything else.
These results describe the people who chose to take the survey, not Americans as a whole. They do show something a two-choice poll cannot: opposition to this war is broad, and it comes from more than one direction.
How we did this
The 2026 Iran War Survey is a voluntary online survey on theadvocates.org. This analysis covers responses from May 29 through October 3, 2026. Respondents found the survey through search, social media, paid social ads and direct visits. Of 2,162 completed responses, we removed one automated entry and 32 repeat entries, keeping each person's first, which left 2,129 respondents. Fifteen percent of respondents said they were under 18. The restraint and surveillance findings hold with those respondents excluded, and with or without respondents who arrived through paid ads.
Each answer counts toward one of three philosophies. A respondent's X score is Conservative answers minus Progressive answers, and Y is Libertarian answers. The fixed scoring rule assigns Moderate when |X| ≤ 4 and Y ≤ 4, Conservative when X > 4 and Y ≤ 5, Progressive when X < −4 and Y ≤ 5, and Libertarian otherwise. "Hawkish answer" means the Conservative option, which on every question supported military action or expanded wartime powers. "Restraint answer" means either the Progressive or the Libertarian option.
Figures are unweighted and rounded, so some totals may not reach 100. Group comparisons use a two-proportion test (p < 0.001 for both the gender and age gaps). Because this is a voluntary sample, it has no margin of error for the general population.
The survey remains open. Take the 2026 Iran War Survey to see where you land.
