Poll: America's Support for Israel Plunges as More Independents and Democrats Sympathize with Palestinians
A new poll published on Friday shows that Americans sympathize more with Palestinians than Israelis.
There is a wide disparity between Republicans, Democrats, and independents, and the question is, why?
The answer is, it’s a matter of faith.
“Forty-one percent of Americans now say they sympathize more with the Palestinians in the Middle East situation, while 36% sympathize more with the Israelis. The five-percentage-point difference is not statistically significant, but it contrasts with a clear lead for the Israelis only a year ago (46% vs. 33%) and larger leads over the prior 24 years,” Gallup said.
“From 2001 to 2025, Israelis consistently held double-digit leads in Americans’ Middle East sympathies, with the gap averaging 43 points between 2001 and 2018. However, public opinion began narrowing in 2019, several years before the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel and the subsequent war in Gaza.
“The cumulative effect of gradual changes in U.S. attitudes since then has led to the Israelis no longer being viewed more sympathetically,” the polling firm added.
Four percent of those surveyed said they sympathize with both sides equally, while 9 percent said they prefer neither side, and 10 percent had no opinion on the matter.
In terms of the actual geographic lands, 46 percent view Israel favorably, while 37 percent view the Palestinian Territories that way. Fifty-seven percent of Americans support a separate Palestinian state, which nearly matches the high-water mark set in 2003.
Drilling deeper into the sympathy question shows a wide partisan divide.
“Seven in 10 Republicans (70%) say they sympathize more with the Israelis, compared with 13% who sympathize more with the Palestinians. Although this remains a substantial gap, sympathy for the Israelis among Republicans has declined by 10 points since 2024 to its lowest level since 2004.”
Meanwhile, 65 percent of Democrats say their sympathies lie more with the Palestinians, while 17 percent are with the Israelis.
The numbers for the Democrats have flipped since 2001, when 51 percent reported greater sympathies for Israelis and 16 percent for Palestinians.
By party, more of Americans’ sympathy is with:
Republicans
• Palestinians: 13%
• Israelis: 70%Democrats
• Palestinians: 65%
• Israelis: 17%Independents
• Palestinians: 41%
• Israelis: 30%👉🏻 https://t.co/046ucHZwId https://t.co/95VxviOZ5q
— Frank Luntz (@FrankLuntz) February 27, 2026
“For the first time on record, as many independents hold a very or mostly favorable view of the Palestinian Territories as they do of Israel,” the Gallup Poll found.
Independents’ support for Israelis has been on a downward trend since 2021, when 55 percent sympathized more with Israelis and 25 percent with Palestinians.
This year, the number flipped, with 41 percent supportive of the Palestinians and 30 percent for the Israelis.
The much stronger support for Israel among Republicans is likely due, in part, to its base of white evangelical Christians, 85 percent of whom identify or lean toward the GOP, according to a 2024 Pew Research poll.
In March of 2024, Survey USA conducted a poll among over 2,000 American Christian adults for Chosen People Ministries, which found, “Among evangelicals, 69 percent agreed that Israel’s right to the land extends to the biblical borders, reflecting the highest level of support among the denominations surveyed. Mainline Protestants showed a slightly lower agreement rate at 52 percent, while 56 percent of Catholics concurred with this perspective,” The Jerusalem Post reported.
The Bible answer site Got Questions said that many Christians’ support for Israel stems from Genesis 12, when God told Abraham, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
That land includes modern-day Israel and more.
Got Questions concluded, “We must look at the ‘big picture’ with a biblical worldview. While we do not have to support everything Israel does as a nation, we most definitely should support Israel’s right to exist. God will fulfill His promises and covenants with Israel. God still has a plan for Israel. Woe to anyone who seeks to defeat that plan; ‘whoever curses you I will curse.’”
Floyd Brown, a Christian and founder of The Western Journal, wrote in a Thursday social media post, “God is restoring Israel for His own name. Otherwise, the Jews would still be scattered across the globe. This is about God and not so much about the Jews. They are His people and therefore His reputation is on the line. Jesus unlike any ‘other god’ from any other religion is a promise keeper.”
“Therefore, I will support the agenda of Jesus which includes the restoration of Israel,” he added.
In Ezekiel, chapter 37, the prophet wrote, “Behold, I will take the people of Israel from the nations among which they have gone, and will gather them from all around, and bring them to their own land.”
Many felt that it started in the late 1800s and continued with the establishment of the nation of Israel after World War II in 1948 and its continued growth in population to this day.
Ezekiel also wrote of an end-time conflict called the battle of Gog and Magog, in which a coalition of nations, including Persia (modern-day Iran) and others, believed to include Russia and Turkey, will attack Israel.
“In the latter years you [this coalition] will go against the land that is restored from war, the land whose people were gathered from many peoples upon the mountains of Israel, which had been a continual waste. Its people were brought out from the peoples and now dwell securely, all of them. You will advance, coming on like a storm. You will be like a cloud covering the land, you and all your hordes, and many peoples with you,” Ezekiel prophesied around 2,500 B.C.
According to the biblical account, God will intervene and protect Israel, using pestilence, hail, and fire to decimate the enemy forces.
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