Survey: Americans Say Local Law Enforcement Should Handle Crime—Not the National Guard
Only 1% of Americans believe another state’s National Guard is best suited to handle crime in their community.
In This Resource
The Trump administration continues to pursue National Guard deployments in several American cities. While the governor is normally the commander of their state’s National Guard, the president has deployed troops into states without the consent of the governor in several instances. The National Guard’s recent missions have ranged from supporting federal immigration enforcement to combatting crime.
A new States United survey shows that Americans overwhelmingly believe crime is best handled by local law enforcement, not the National Guard. Majorities of Republicans, Democrats, and independents agree.
The survey additionally finds that only 1% of Americans believe that another state’s National Guard is best suited to handle crime in their community.
The survey comes as the President’s rhetoric on crime and National Guard deployments continues to escalate. On Sept. 30, in a speech to military leaders in Quantico, Virgina, President Trump suggested that “we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military National Guard” and that “America is under invasion from within.”
The administration has also begun ordering National Guard troops to move across state lines. President Trump recently sent federalized California National Guard members into Oregon, and he has authorized members of the Texas National Guard to support federal missions in Portland and Chicago.
This new survey builds on previous States United polling that shows that Americans oppose deploying the National Guard into a state without the consent of that state’s governor.
- 70% of Americans say local law enforcement is best suited to handle crime in their communities, reflecting majorities of all partisan groups.
- Few Americans say their state’s National Guard is best suited for handling crime.
- Almost no one (1%) says that another state’s Guard is the best fit for the job.
About 7 in 10 Americans say that they believe that local law enforcement is best suited to handle crime in their communities. Just 13% say that their state’s National Guard is best for the job, and almost no one thinks that either another state’s Guard (1%) or the Marines (2%) are the best fits. There are some large partisan differences shown below, but note that despite that, majorities of Democrats (83%), independents (62%), and Republicans (59%) say that local law enforcement is best suited to handle crime in their communities.
These data are taken from a States United survey based on 6,037 interviews conducted on the internet of U.S. adults. Participants were drawn from YouGov’s online panel and were interviewed from September 5 – 15, 2025. Respondents were selected to be representative of American adults. Responses were additionally weighted to match population characteristics with respect to gender, age, race/ethnicity, education of registered voters, and U.S. Census region based on voter registration lists, the U.S. Census American Community Survey, and the U.S. Census Current Population Survey, as well as 2024 presidential vote. The margin of error for this survey is approximately ± 1.4 percentage points, though it is larger for the analysis of partisan subgroups described above. Therefore, sample estimates should differ from their expected value by less than the margin of error in 95% of all samples. This figure does not reflect non-sampling errors, including potential selection bias in panel participation or measurement error.
In keeping with best research practices, we classify independent voters who reported “leaning” toward either the Democratic or Republican parties as partisans. Therefore, we define “independents” as those respondents who professed no partisan attachments whatsoever.