Poll Shows Americans Divided over Reagan’s Visit to Bitburg

The American public is equally divided over President Reagan’s visit to the German military cemetery at Bitburg, according to a New York Times/CBS News Poll published in the Times today.

The poll showed that a total of 41 percent of the American public supports the visit while 41 percent said Reagan should not have made the visit. Eighteen percent had no opinion.

The poll was based on telephone interviews conducted Monday evening, a day after Reagan visited Bitburg, with 692 adults around the United States, excluding Alaska and Hawaii. The poll carries a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4 percentage points. The poll included 22 Jews, 21 of whom said Reagan should not have gone to Bitburg and the other one undecided.

Half of those who supported the trip singled out the need for good relations with West Germany. Those who opposed the visit cited atrocities against Jews and war memories generally.

The survey, however, showed no significant change in Reagan’s overall standing with the public. At the end of February, a Times/CBS News poll showed 59 percent of the public approved his handling of his job. In this poll, 56 percent approved.

The poll’s findings indicated that Reagan’s visit to Bitburg along with his visit to Bergen-Belsen diminished the public’s opposition to the Bitburg visit. An April 22 poll by The Washington Post/ABC News found that 51 percent of the public opposed Reagan’s planned visit to Bitburg while 39 percent approved.

JEWISH ALIENATION CITED

Meanwhile, Richard Wirthlin, the President’s poll-taker, said yesterday that it is pretty clear “that the Jewish community has been strongly alienated” by Reagan’s visit. He said the visit created antagonisms within the Jewish community “stronger than we were able to measure in survey research.” He said that all Americans “even in the eye of the storm … divided almost equally on whether the President should go to Bitburg or not.”