A new Survey Sampling International poll found that only 16% of Americans can find Ukraine on a map and this lack of knowledge is related to preferences: "The farther their guesses were from Ukraine's actual location, the more they wanted the U.S. to intervene with military force."

"Even controlling for a series of demographic characteristics and participants' general foreign policy attitudes, we found that the less accurate our participants were, the more they wanted the U.S. to use force, the greater the threat they saw Russia as posing to U.S. interests, and the more they thought that using force would advance U.S. national security interests; all of these effects are statistically significant at a 95 percent confidence level."