The setting is what makes this unusual. Mike Waltz was on Face the Nation, on the network that commissioned the poll, being asked about its findings, when he said the administration was achieving goals 'that 78- 70, what 80% of Americans support' [1].
The CBS News/YouGov survey was fielded July 22 to 24 among 2,193 adults, with a margin of error of about 2.7 points [2]. Its headline findings are not close to that. Sixty-seven percent want the conflict ended now. Thirty-five percent approve of the president's handling of the war [1].
There is one figure in the survey near 80 percent. Roughly eight in ten respondents say the war has been harder than the administration expected [2] - the measure of the gap between what was promised and what happened, and the least favourable number in the poll.
CBS's elections and surveys director, Anthony Salvanto, summarised it on air in the same hour: 'A majority still says they would prefer to end it at this point' [1].
The stumble in the quote - '78- 70, what 80%' - suggests a man reaching for a number rather than citing one. That is the ordinary way this happens, and it does not make the statement more accurate.
What the poll records is a public that wants the war to stop, disapproves of how it has been run, and believes it has gone worse than it was sold [1][2].
