For the primary time, a Gallup survey discovered extra Individuals sympathize with Palestinians than Israelis within the long-running Center East battle, a watershed second in relations between the US and one in every of its closest — however most controversial — allies.
New polling information from Gallup discovered that 41 p.c of Individuals say their sympathies are extra with the Palestinians versus 36 p.c for the Israelis. Whereas that’s nonetheless throughout the margin of error, it’s a serious change from final 12 months, when the numbers had been 46-33 in Israel’s favor.
Since Gallup began monitoring this query in 2001, Israel usually held a double-digit lead, with the numbers shifting dramatically solely in recent times, accelerating with the warfare in Gaza underneath then-President Joe Biden and the Trump administration’s embrace of a few of Israel’s most controversial insurance policies.
The shift over the previous 12 months is just not, primarily, one other instance of the oft-told story of Israel dropping American Democrats. Democratic sympathy had already collapsed between 2023 and 2025 and didn’t change a lot over the previous 12 months.
The large shift has been amongst independents, who flipped from 42-34 p.c in Israelis’ favor in 2025 to 41-30 p.c in Palestinians’ favor now. Republican help for Israel remains to be sturdy however has additionally been dropping, with a ten level decline since 2024.
The shift is clear throughout all age teams, however the drop in help has been most pronounced amongst younger and middle-aged Individuals, whose sympathies within the battle have practically flipped during the last two years.
Evaluating cross-tabs of age and get together ID reveals some much more placing developments. (These are damaged into three-year buckets to get a extra strong pattern dimension.) From 2024–2026, solely 52 p.c of younger Republican and Republican-leaning voters sympathized extra with the Israelis, down from 69 p.c within the 2018–2020 interval earlier than the Gaza Warfare, a discovering that dovetails with different latest surveys displaying a drop in help for US support to Israel amongst younger Republicans. Amongst younger Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters, it’s solely 11 p.c.
A sea change in US-Israel politics
Over the previous 20 years, an extended bipartisan consensus on the Center East battle has roughly damaged down, as the federal government of Israel, led for many of that point by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has grow to be ever extra carefully linked to the Republican Social gathering.
That is an period that included Netanyahu’s public feuding with the Obama administration over the Iran nuclear deal; controversial strikes by the Trump administration to transfer the US embassy to Jerusalem and endorse Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights; after which widespread US backlash, predominantly on the left, to US army help for Israel in the course of the latest warfare in Gaza.
Opposition to arms gross sales to Israel was as soon as a fringe place for Democratic US lawmakers however is now more and more mainstream. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the highly effective lobbying group that for many years labored to keep up a bipartisan consensus on Israel, is turning into more and more poisonous for Democrats.
Israel grew nearer to the Republican Social gathering all through the 2000s and 2010s, when it was seen as a worthwhile ally within the post-9/11 warfare on terror and a religiously and culturally pleasant bulwark towards Islamic radicalism amongst conservative evangelicals.
Extra just lately, nevertheless, there are indicators that Netanyahu’s guess on the Republican Social gathering within the Trump period could also be backfiring, as “America First” parts of the MAGA motion have gotten more and more vocal of their opposition to US help for Israel, led by figures like pundit Tucker Carlson and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.
The get together’s divide was on full show in a latest contentious interview between Carlson and US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee (arguably the nation’s most outstanding Christian Zionist), which made waves all through the Center East as a consequence of Huckabee’s suggestion that Israel could be entitled to manage of a lot of the area on biblical grounds, although he added that they had no such ambitions.
This development is clearly not all about geopolitics or sympathy for the Palestinians. Carlson hosted the antisemitic, white nationalist podcaster Nick Fuentes on his present. And Florida gubernatorial candidate James Fishback, operating on an anti-Israel platform, has used antisemitic speaking factors in his marketing campaign.
President Donald Trump appears to have a way that the difficulty is just not the political winner it as soon as was for his base, reportedly warning a Jewish marketing campaign donor final 12 months that “my individuals are beginning to hate Israel.”
Nonetheless, his administration continues to again a few of Israel’s most controversial insurance policies.
Simply weeks after Israel’s safety cupboard introduced new land possession insurance policies for the West Financial institution, described by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich as a part of an effort to “proceed to kill the concept of a Palestinian state,” the US introduced that it will present embassy companies to US residents dwelling in West Financial institution settlements for the primary time, a transfer seen by critics as an oblique endorsement of a settlement mission thought of unlawful by a lot of the world.
Because the US army builds towards a possible new warfare with Iran, Politico reported this week that White Home officers want a situation wherein Israel begins the army marketing campaign as a result of “the politics are so much higher if the Israelis go first.” However the newest polling means that the politics round America’s longtime ally within the Center East should not what they was.
