For the primary time, a Gallup survey discovered extra People sympathize with Palestinians than Israelis within the long-running Center East battle, a watershed second in relations between the US and one among its closest — however most controversial — allies.
New polling knowledge from Gallup discovered that 41 p.c of People say their sympathies are extra with the Palestinians versus 36 p.c for the Israelis. Whereas that’s nonetheless inside the margin of error, it’s a significant change from final yr, when the numbers had been 46-33 in Israel’s favor.
Since Gallup began monitoring this query in 2001, Israel sometimes held a double-digit lead, with the numbers shifting dramatically solely in recent times, accelerating with the battle in Gaza beneath 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 yr just isn’t, primarily, one other instance of the oft-told story of Israel shedding American Democrats. Democratic sympathy had already collapsed between 2023 and 2025 and didn’t change a lot over the previous yr.
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 continues to be robust 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 People, whose sympathies within the battle have almost flipped over the past two years.
Evaluating cross-tabs of age and occasion ID reveals some much more putting 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 Struggle, a discovering that dovetails with different current surveys exhibiting a drop in help for US assist 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, a protracted 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 turn into 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 through the current battle 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 changing 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 beneficial ally within the post-9/11 battle on terror and a religiously and culturally pleasant bulwark in opposition to Islamic radicalism amongst conservative evangelicals.
Extra not too long ago, nonetheless, 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 occasion’s divide was on full show in a current 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 resulting from Huckabee’s suggestion that Israel could be entitled to regulate of a lot of the area on biblical grounds, although he added that they had no such ambitions.
This pattern 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 problem just isn’t the political winner it as soon as was for his base, reportedly warning a Jewish marketing campaign donor final yr 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 could present embassy companies to US residents residing in West Financial institution settlements for the primary time, a transfer seen by critics as an oblique endorsement of a settlement undertaking thought-about unlawful by a lot of the world.
Because the US army builds towards a possible new battle with Iran, Politico reported this week that White Home officers want a situation by which Israel begins the army marketing campaign as a result of “the politics are rather a lot higher if the Israelis go first.” However the newest polling means that the politics round America’s longtime ally within the Center East usually are not what they was once.
