Republicans and the elderly are Israel’s last bastion of support in the US
For the first time in recent history, more Americans now sympathize more with the Palestinians than the Israelis, a Gallup poll has found. According to the survey, sympathy for the Israeli cause has fallen a record 10% in the last year.
The poll, which was published on Friday, found that 41% of Americans say their sympathies lie “more with the Palestinians” than the Israelis, up from 33% last year. 36% say they sympathize “more with the Israelis,” down from 46% last year. The remainder either have no opinion or do not favor one side over the other.
Israel was still waging a war on multiple fronts when last year’s poll was taken and had killed 62,000 Palestinians in Gaza by early February 2025. Since then, Israel waged a 12-day war against Iran in June and struck a ceasefire deal with Hamas in October, which it has been accused of violating hundreds of times.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has acknowledged Israel’s declining support among Americans, which he partly blames on “anti-Semitic” content shared on social media. Israeli social media influencers, he argued in September, are “the most important weapon… to secure our base in the US.”
A chart showing American sympathy for the Israelis versus the Palestinians, published by Gallup on February 27, 2026
Public opinion in the US has favored Israel since Gallup first began tracking the topic in 2001. This year’s poll marks the first time in 25 years that sympathy has shifted in favor of the Palestinians.
Democrats are the most likely to sympathize with the Palestinians, with 65% favoring them and 17% favoring the Israelis. Opinion was almost evenly split among Democrats before the Israeli military began bombing Gaza in response to Hamas’ attack on Israel in October 2023. In 2022, 40% of Democrats sympathized with the Israelis and 38% with the Palestinians.
Americans of all ages have grown to favor the Palestinians more in recent years, with those aged 18-34 and 35-54 now sympathizing with them over the Israelis.
Republicans and the elderly are now the only demographics expressing a clear preference for Israel. 70% of Republicans and 49% of over-55s sympathize with the Israelis, with 13% and 31% of these groups siding with the Palestinians, respectively.
Despite the pro-Palestinian shift, 46% of all Americans still say that they have a favorable view of the state of Israel, while 37% say they have a favorable view of the Palestinian Territories, which the US does not recognize as a state.
