Americans Highly Opposed to Use of Drones for U.S Police Work

Voters show strong support for increasing the use of unmanned drone aircraft to kill terrorists overseas, but when it comes to using such drones in the skies in the U.S., voters don't tend to feel the same way.

According to a new Rasmussen Reports poll, 69 percent of likely U.S. voters favor the use of unmanned drone aircraft to kill al-Qaida and Taliban terrorists overseas while 20 percent oppose the use of drones to kill terrorists overseas.

General support for drone killings is unchanged from Maybut down from 76 percentinFebruary 2012,just after President Obama acknowledged the programs existence. Opposition to drone use is up from 14 percent in May.

Sixty-four percent believe its at least somewhat likely that drone strikes overseas have killed more innocent civilians than the U.S. government is officially reporting, but just 21 percent consider that unlikely.

When it comes to drone usage on American soil, likely voters are less comfortableabout using drones on U.S. citizens abroad and at home. Only 38 percent favor the governments use of drones to kill U.S. citizens overseas who pose a terrorist threat, while nearly the same number -- 39 percent -- are opposed.

More than half of likely voters -- 66 percent -- oppose the use of unmanned drones by police agencies in the United States. Only 18 percent said they favor such usage of drones.

The survey of 1,000 likely voters was conducted Oct. 24-25. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95 percent level of confidence.