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Poll Shows Double-Digit Drop in US Voter Support for Israel Since 2023

Protesters take part in a demonstration against the visit of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Lafayette Square near the White House in Washington, DC, on September 29, 2025.

(Photo by Mehmet Eser/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images)

Poll Shows Double-Digit Drop in US Voter Support for Israel Since 2023

A new survey shows just 32% of US voters view Israel positively—down from 47% in 2023.

Support for Israel has dropped across the board among US voters over the last three years, with particularly steep declines among Democrats and independents, according to a poll commissioned by NBC News.

Overall, the poll conducted by Hart Research Associates and Public Opinion Strategies found that 32% of registered US voters view Israel positively, while 39% see the country in a negative light. This is a drastic shift from 2023, when the same poll found that 47% of US voters viewed Israel positively, versus just 24% who viewed it negatively.

Democratic voters have been leading the shift away from Israel, as the percentage of Democrats who view Israel positively has fallen from 34% in 2024 to 13% in 2026, while negative views of the country have spiked from 35% to 57% over the last three years.

The shift among independent voters has been almost as dramatic, as just 21% of independents said they now have a positive view of Israel, compared to 40% of independents who viewed Israel positively in 2023. This has similarly correlated with a dramatic spike in negative views of Israel, with 48% of independents rating the country negatively, versus 22% who rated it negatively in 2023.

Republicans overall remained much more supportive of Israel than Democrats and independents, but the poll still showed that GOP support for Israel fell by nine percentage points over the last three years.

Democratic pollster Jeff Horwitt told NBC News that the shift in opinion against Israel was a direct result of its assault on Gaza that has killed at least 70,000 Palestinian civilians.

"Israel may have had major military success in its war against Hamas," Horwitt said, "but its actions have badly damaged its standing among the American people."

A poll released by Gallup in February found that, for the first time ever, US voters said they were more sympathetic to Palestinians than to Israelis, just one year after finding that Americans expressed more sympathy toward Israelis than Palestinians by a margin of 13 percentage points.

Israel's unpopularity among Democratic primary voters has led to candidates trying to distance themselves from groups such as the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which is spending big in primaries to defeat Democrats who have been critical of the Israeli government.

As reported by CNN on Sunday, even Democrats running as supporters of Israel have taken pains to not be associated with AIPAC, which has become especially toxic among Democratic primary voters.

"From Minnesota to Mississippi, operatives involved in races told CNN candidates are constantly facing questions about the group on the trail," the network noted. "Incumbents tell CNN they expect it to come up regularly at town halls. And online, detractors constantly pounce on politicians’ comments they perceive as sympathetic to Israel as evidence of being coopted by AIPAC."

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