Poll: 63% of Americans agree that Putin ‘cannot remain in power’

As the war in Ukraine continues, 63% of Americans now say they agree that Russian President Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power,” according to a new Yahoo News/YouGov poll. 14% disagree. The rest (23%) are unsure.

At the same time, however, the survey of 1,618 U.S. adults, which was conducted from March 31 to April 4, also found that injecting President Biden into the equation significantly altered public sentiment.

Asked whether respondents agreed with an unattributed quote about Putin  “This man cannot remain in power” 63% of those surveyed said they did.

When Yahoo News and YouGov posed the question differently, asking whether “President Biden” was “right or wrong” to have said those words, which Biden did on March 26th,  48% of Americans were willing to say the president was “right.”

Likewise, the number who said Biden was “wrong” (29%) was more than twice as high as the number who disagreed with his remark before it was attributed to him (14%).

Prior to Biden’s name being mentioned Republicans agreed that Putin “cannot remain in power” by a 36-point margin (57% agree vs. 21% disagree). After the remark was attributed to the president, however, they insisted he was wrong by 9 points (46% wrong vs. 37% right).

The White House, released an immediate statement saying that Biden was not advocating for regime change in Russia.

“The President’s point was that Putin cannot be allowed to exercise power over his neighbors or the region,” a White House spokesman said in a written statement. “He was not discussing Putin’s power in Russia, or regime change.”

Biden himself later characterized his own words as a “personal feeling” of “moral outrage” rather than an administration policy of “taking down” the Russian leader.