A new national poll suggests Americans are split over whether the United States should close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, a step that CNN has learned President Barack Obama plans to order Thursday.

But support for closing the detention facility has increased since 2005, according to the CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey released Wednesday.

Fifty-one percent of those questioned in the survey supported the closing of the detention facility, while 47 percent were against the closing. That’s basically an even split when taking into account the survey’s sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

But the 51 percent who support the closing of the facility is a 15-point increase from 2005, when 36 percent of those polled backed the shut-down of the facility. The 47 percent against the closing is down 11 points from the 58 percent with that opinion in 2005.


Source: The CNN Wire