A narrow majority of U.S. voters surveyed support President Trump Donald John TrumpSteele Dossier sub-source was subject of FBI counterintelligence probe Pelosi slams Trump executive order on pre-existing conditions: It 'isn't worth the paper it's signed on' Trump 'no longer angry' at Romney because of Supreme Court stance MORE’s decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria and reduce the country’s military presence in Afghanistan, according to a new Harvard CAPS/Harris poll released exclusively to The Hill.

Fifty-two percent of respondents said they back the moves in Syria and Afghanistan, which came as a surprise to the president’s own national security advisers when it was announced last week. By contrast, 48 percent said they oppose the troop withdrawals and reductions, the poll found.

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Trump announced he would completely remove the approximately 2,000 troops in Syria battling the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), while he said he would cut in half the roughly 14,000 U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

The announcements contributed to the resignation of Defense Secretary James Mattis James Norman MattisBiden courts veterans amid fallout from Trump military controversies Trump says he wanted to take out Syria's Assad but Mattis opposed it Gary Cohn: 'I haven't made up my mind' on vote for president in November MORE and Brett McGurk, the U.S. special envoy to the coalition fighting ISIS.

They have also been criticized by a number of GOP lawmakers, while the removal of U.S. troops from Syria has won praise from Russian President Vladimir Putin, who wants to increase his country’s leverage in the Middle East.

While a slight majority of U.S. voters in the poll said they support the troop reduction in Syria and Afghanistan, an even larger majority — 69 percent — said that it is important for the U.S. to keep ground troops in the Middle East.

Twenty-three percent said it is “very important,” while 46 percent said that it is “somewhat important,” the poll found.

When asked whether they “think U.S. ground troops should be kept in places like Syria and Iraq to maintain security in the region” or if they “think it is better to withdraw our troops from such areas,” 54 percent of respondents said that it is better to keep troops there, while 46 percent said that U.S. forces should be withdrawn from the region.

Mark Penn, the co-director of the Harvard CAPS/Harris poll, said that the simultaneous support for the troop withdrawal and for keeping U.S. forces in the Middle East signals that voters are willing to trust Trump's military judgement.

“A majority supports the president’s decision to remove troops from Syria despite their general view they would keep troops there,” Penn said. “This suggests that they would have supported either decision but are going with the president on this one. Their reasoning goes like this: ‘if a president as pro military as Trump wants the troops out, maybe he is right.’ ”