Over the past two months, we have asked over 2,000 American adults an open-ended question: “Based on your understanding of the situation in Iran, what do you feel is the main goal for the United States?” One month ago, Americans offered a fragmented and largely partisan reading of what the United States was trying to accomplish in Iran. The landscape was split between a national security narrative concentrated among Trump voters and competing, more cynical frameworks (oil, personal enrichment for Trump and his friend, and political distraction) that dominated responses from Harris voters and non-2024 voters. A month later, this question elicits a meaningfully different set of responses. The overall partisan divisions remain, but the specific narratives that animate each side have shifted in ways that suggest real world events are reshaping how Americans are making sense of U.S. involvement.

At the surface level, the nuclear weapons prevention frame has continued to grow, now cited by roughly 43% of all respondents, up from 35% in March. More striking is what has declined, pointing to a clear failure of the Democratic Party to focus on a consistent message. The oil and economic greed narrative fell from 22% to 9% overall. Trump's personal motives dropped from 12% to 7%. The "Epstein distraction" narrative, one of the more interesting takes from the first wave, nearly disappeared.

For the Administration, messaging around regime change has seemingly disappeared and was only mentioned by about 5% of respondents in April (down from 10%).

New this month are mentions of the Strait of Hormuz, which account for roughly 6% of responses, and a peace and de-escalation focused framing has grown modestly but consistently across groups.

Partisan attitudes toward military action remain sharply divided, with support for bombing Iran exceeding 70% among Trump voters, while it remains below 35% among Harris voters. However, the gap in how each group narrates the conflict has narrowed in a specific way: cynical framings among Harris voters have retreated, not because those voters have adopted the national security frame, but because they appear to have lost confidence in a set explanation for the question of why the decision was made in the first place (see above on messaging failure).

Shifts Since March

The most consequential change in the data is not the rise of any single new frame but the collapse of several competing ones. In March, oil and economic interests, Trump's personal motivations, and regime change together accounted for a significant share of all responses, particularly among non-Trump voters. Collectively, those three themes have lost roughly half their combined footprint. That consolidation has benefited the nuclear weapons frame at the aggregate level, but the dynamics underneath are more complicated.

The "don't know" share fell from approximately 22% to 16% overall. This decline is meaningful but should not be overstated. There are also two different versions of “I don’t know” that are tough to discern in text responses. Is it shoulder shrug (“I don’t know”), or is it more head shaking (“I have no idea”)? For the former, when conflicts become high-profile, uncertainty tends to decrease as media coverage and messaging create opinions even among people who might otherwise stay disengaged. That dynamic is likely operating here. Whether the newly formed opinions are durable or whether disengagement will reassert itself as coverage cycles down remains an open question.

Two genuinely new frames emerged in April. The Strait of Hormuz, the Persian Gulf shipping corridor whose closure by both Iran and the U.S. dominated the coverage for over a week, registers as an unprompted explanation among approximately 6% of respondents. Its appearance is notable precisely because it was not a frame respondents were offered; they volunteered it. Similarly, a peace and de-escalation frame (responses calling for cease-fires, withdrawal, and negotiation) grew from roughly 3% to 6%, driven primarily by Harris voters who appear to be migrating away from cynical explanations toward a more principled anti-war stance.

Partisan Breakdown in April

Looking at the responses this month among 2024 Harris voters compared to Trump voters there are clear differences (as is expected). The biggest are mentions among Trump voters of preventing nuclear weapons (32% vs 9%). Among Harris voters the biggest differences are the mentions or themes around oil and greed (12% of Harris voters vs 4% of Trump voters), Trump’s motivations (9% vs 1%), and also statements around “don’t know” or “I have no idea” (16% vs 7%).

While differences between the two voting blocs are not new, they are also not static.

Trump Voters

The single most striking finding among Trump voters is the 20-point decline in the nuclear weapons frame, which fell from approximately 52% in March to roughly 32% in April. This is the largest single-group, single-theme shift in the entire dataset across both waves of responses. The most plausible interpretation is not that Trump voters have become less focused on nuclear security, but that the frame has evolved: before military strikes, preventing nuclear weapons was the logical stated goal; after strikes began, that goal is increasingly described in broader security and protective language. Trump voters are now approximately three times as likely as Harris voters to name nuclear weapons specifically, but the share using general protection language, "keep America safe," "protect our country," "eliminate the threat," rose by roughly 8 points. The mission framing appears to have shifted from prevention to execution.

Regime change also fell sharply among Trump voters, from approximately 12% to 4%. This likely reflects a similar dynamic: goals that were forward-looking as military action began now feel either in progress or achieved. At least one respondent explicitly noted the death of Iran's Supreme Leader as an accomplished objective, suggesting that for some Trump voters, the goalposts have moved.

The "don't know" rate among Trump voters remained low at roughly 7%, the most opinion-engaged group by a wide margin. Israel was cited by about 4% of Trump voters, almost always as a legitimate ally rather than a puppet master, a framing that stands in sharp contrast to how the Israel frame operates among other groups.

Harris Voters

The Harris voter data contains some dramatic movement. Three cynical frames that defined this group's responses in March have each retreated significantly in the same direction and at the same time, which argues against random noise and toward a genuine collective updating. Oil and economic greed fell from 28% to 12%. Trump's personal motives fell from 22% to 9%. The Epstein distraction narrative fell from 10% to roughly 3%.

What makes these declines interesting is that they did not produce a corresponding rise in the anti-Trump frame. Instead, the shifts went primarily toward "don't know" (which remained elevated at 16%), peace and de-escalation sentiment (roughly 5%), and an "isolationist" frame (responses calling for the U.S. to stay out entirely) that also accounts for approximately 5%. In other words, Harris voters who previously had confident, cynical explanations appear to have traded those explanations not for the administration's framing, but for uncertainty or outright opposition to involvement.

The Trump personal motive frame is fascinating. At 22% in March, it was the dominant explanation for U.S.-Iran policy among Harris voters. Its fall to 9% is one of the more significant credibility shifts in the data. It does not mean those voters now trust the administration's stated objectives; the persistently high "don't know" rate suggests they remain skeptical. But the specific narrative that Trump was acting out of ego, personal enrichment, or political theater has become markedly less compelling as a primary explanation in the context of actual military engagement.

Not to sound like a broken record, but the Party’s inability to focus on a few main critiques of the administration is playing out in the data.

Bottom Line

The April data suggest that public understanding of U.S. goals in Iran is responding to events but not converging. The nuclear weapons frame has grown overall, cynical framing has retreated, and new operational themes like the Strait of Hormuz have emerged. On the surface, this looks like a public coming into alignment with the Administration’s stated U.S. policy objectives.

Trump voters shifted away from nuclear prevention language, not because they became less supportive, but because the frame evolved from a prospective goal to an active operation. Their underlying support for military action remains strong, and their interpretation of U.S. objectives remains security focused. Harris voters, meanwhile, did not update toward the administration's framing (not shocking), but instead they updated away from their prior cynical explanations without replacing them with a coherent alternative. The result is a population that is more uncertain, more inclined toward peace and de-escalation, and still deeply skeptical about leadership motives, even if they can no longer articulate exactly what those motives are.

The most consequential finding may be the one that is easiest to overlook: the Strait of Hormuz frame's emergence as a cross-partisan, non-moralistic explanation for U.S. involvement. It is practically the only frame in the data that does not sort cleanly by political tribe affiliation. From a strategic communications standpoint, that makes it worth watching. In a landscape where every other major explanation for U.S. involvement has become a partisan signal, a concrete economic and transit security rationale that resonates across groups represents rare common ground, or at a minimum, a common vocabulary.

What this data does not yet show is where the Harris voter uncertainty goes over time. The three dominant cynical frames have lost significant ground, but the nuclear prevention frame has not gained ground among this group. Whether that gap fills with principled opposition, provisional acceptance, or continued disengagement will be the most important dynamic to track in subsequent months.