New Yahoo News/YouGov poll: Sympathy for Israel increases amid widening Middle East conflict

After falling steadily in the year since the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, the share of Americans who say they’re more sympathetic to Israel than to the Palestinians has reversed course and increased amid the widening Middle East conflict, according to a new Yahoo News/YouGov poll.

In the wake of Oct. 7, 43% of Americans said they were more sympathetic to Israel than to the Palestinians — a significant jump from the level of sympathy expressed in a May 2021 Yahoo News/YouGov poll (30%). That number then declined in survey after survey as the Gaza war dragged on; by May of this year, it had all but returned to its 2021 level (31%).

But now, five months later, sympathy for Israel is back up, to 36%.

In another sign of shifting opinion, slightly fewer Americans now say Israel has "gone too far" in its "military response over the past year" (36%) than said the same in May about its military response "in the Gaza Strip” (39%). At the same time, the number of Americans who say Israel’s military response has “been about right” has ticked up 8 points, from 19% to 27%. (Another 14% of Americans continue to say Israel’s response has “not gone far enough.”)

On the flip side, 17% of Americans now say they’re more sympathetic to the Palestinians than to Israel, up from 9% last October but down slightly from 19% this May. A quarter of Americans (26%) say their sympathies are “about equal.”

The new poll of 1,714 U.S. adults was conducted from Oct. 2 to 4 — shortly after Iran fired a salvo of ballistic missiles at Israel in retaliation for Israeli strikes against Tehran's Hezbollah allies in Lebanon, who had been launching rockets and drones deep into the Jewish state.

Asked about these “current hostilities,” far more Americans say that Iran is mostly or entirely responsible (48%) than say the same of Israel (28%). In May 2024, 56% said Hamas was mostly or entirely responsible for the hostilities in Gaza; just 27% put most or all of the blame on Israel.

Yet despite some modest shifts amid an expanding conflict, Americans still express less overall sympathy for Israel (down 7 points) — and more overall sympathy for the Palestinian people (up 8 points) — than they did last October. Since November 2023, the number who characterize "America's relationship with Israel" as "too supportive" has increased from 29% to 33%. And significantly more Americans continue to prefer that the U.S. work to "broker a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas" (51%) rather than "support Israel as it tries to defeat Hamas and its allies" (29%) — numbers that have not changed since May.

____________

The Yahoo News survey was conducted by YouGov using a nationally representative sample of 1,714 U.S. adults interviewed online from Oct. 2 to 4, 2024. The sample was weighted according to gender, age, race, education, 2020 election turnout and presidential vote, baseline party identification and current voter registration status. Demographic weighting targets come from the 2019 American Community Survey. Baseline party identification is the respondent’s most recent answer given prior to Nov. 1, 2022, and is weighted to the estimated distribution at that time (33% Democratic, 27% Republican). Respondents were selected from YouGov’s opt-in panel to be representative of all U.S. adults. The margin of error is approximately 2.9%.