Overview

Public interest in news from Egypt has plummeted since the early weeks of the Arab Spring in February

2011. And the share of Americans saying what happens in Egypt is “very important” to U.S. interests has fallen by 10 points – from 46% to 36% – since then.

The survey by the Pew Research Center, conducted July 11-14 among 1,002 adults, finds that about a quarter (23%) say the United States can have a lot of influence on the current situation, while nearly as many (24%) say it has little or no influence; 48% say the U.S. can have some influence on events in Egypt.

The recent violent turmoil in Egypt, which followed former president Mohamed Morsi’s ouster by the country’s security forces, has attracted little interest among Americans. Just 15% say they followed Morsi’s removal from power very closely; nearly six-in-ten (59%) followed the news not too closely or not at all closely.

Two years ago, more than twice as many (39%) paid very close attention to the sudden end of Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year rule, following widespread anti-government protests. It was one of the top stories of 2011, a year that featured a number of major overseas news stories.

Interest in current news from Egypt is low across all demographic groups. And there are no significant partisan differences in opinions about the importance of events in Egypt to U.S. interests and the influence of the United States on the current situation there. Currently, 40% of independents, 36% of Democrats and 35% of Republicans say what happens in Egypt is very important to U.S. interests. In a February 2011 poll by CBS News, 53% of Republicans, 47% of Democrats and 44% of independents held this view.

Most Say Issues at Home Concern Them More

Fully 78% say that while the news from Egypt is important, “there are issues in the United States that concern me more.” And a majority (55%) says they feel they lack the background information to really know what is going on there. These opinions are little changed from two years ago, when public interest in Egypt news was substantially higher.

However, the share saying that news from Egypt “is changing so quickly I can’t keep up” has increased 12 points since February 2011 – from 34% to 46%. And about half of Americans (48%) say it is hard to know which group could best lead the country.

These opinions, like views of Egypt’s importance and U.S. influence, span demographic and partisan groups. For instance, comparable percentages of Democrats (52%), independents (49%) and Republicans (46%) say it is hard to know which groups could best lead the country. And nearly equal shares among all three groups say events in Egypt are changing so quickly it is hard to keep up (48% of Democrats, 47% of Republicans, 45% of independents).

The analysis in this report is based on telephone interviews conducted July 11-14, 2013, among a national sample of 1,002 adults 18 years of age or older living in the continental United States (502 respondents were interviewed on a landline telephone, and 500 were interviewed on a cell phone, including 268 who had no landline telephone). The survey was conducted by interviewers at Princeton Data Source under the direction of Princeton Survey Research Associates International. A combination of landline and cell phone random digit dial samples were used; both samples were provided by Survey Sampling International. Interviews were conducted in English. Respondents in the landline sample were selected by randomly asking for the youngest adult male or female who is now at home. Interviews in the cell sample were conducted with the person who answered the phone, if that person was an adult 18 years of age or older. For detailed information about our survey methodology, see:  http://pewresearch.org/pewresearch-org/politics/methodology/.

The combined landline and cell phone sample are weighted using an iterative technique that matches gender, age, education, race, Hispanic origin and region to parameters from the 2011 Census Bureau’s American Community Survey and population density to parameters from the Decennial Census. The sample also is weighted to match current patterns of telephone status, based on extrapolations from the 2012 National Health Interview Survey. The weighting procedure also accounts for the fact that respondents with both landline and cell phones have a greater probability of being included in the combined sample and adjusts for household size among respondents with a landline phone. Sampling errors and statistical tests of significance take into account the effect of weighting. The following table shows the unweighted sample sizes and the error attributable to sampling that would be expected at the 95% level of confidence for different groups in the survey:

Sample sizes and sampling errors for other subgroups are available upon request.

In addition to sampling error, one should bear in mind that question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of opinion polls.