Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for free
Your guide to what Trump’s second term means for Washington, business and the world
More Americans sympathise with Palestinians than Israelis for the first time since Gallup began tracking the sentiment, according to a poll released on Friday.
The shift comes after more than two decades of Americans favouring Israelis by a significant margin, according to Gallup, and as Palestinian efforts to recover from Israel’s two-year war against Hamas in Gaza have stalled amid an Israeli blockade and intermittent fighting since a US-brokered ceasefire in October.
Forty-one per cent of Americans said they sympathise more with Palestinians in the Middle East conflict, compared with 36 per cent who sympathise more with Israelis, Gallup said. This contrasts with a clear lead for the Israelis only a year ago, 46 per cent compared with 33 per cent for the Palestinians, and larger margins over the previous 24 years.
“From 2001 to 2025, Israelis consistently held double-digit leads in Americans’ Middle East sympathies,” the report said.
More than 72,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to Gaza’s health ministry, and most of the densely populated territory has been reduced to rubble since Hamas’s October 7 2023 attack, when militants killed 1,200 people.
The shift in popular opinion comes as the US gears up for midterm elections, which could see Democrats regain control of the House and Senate.
Foreign policy is rarely a major issue in US elections. But analysts say frustration with former president Joe Biden’s handling of the Gaza war played a role for some voters in the 2022 presidential race, while some Americans have already criticised President Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace” to oversee Gaza reconstruction.
While a significant majority of Democrats polled say they sympathise more with the Palestinians than the Israelis (65 per cent vs 17 per cent), much of the broader shift was driven by independent voters who now favour the Palestinians by 41 per cent compared with 30 per cent for Israelis. Last year they favoured Israelis by 42 per cent versus 34 per cent for the Palestinians.
Among Republicans, sympathy for the Israelis has declined by 10 points since 2024 to reach its lowest level since 2004, Gallup found.
Trump and his supporters in Congress have sought to portray the Republicans as the most pro-Israel party. But fractures among Trump’s Maga movement have also emerged, as some far-right influencers and lawmakers, including talk show host Tucker Carlson and former Congress member Marjorie Taylor Greene, have criticised what they believe is unchecked US support for Israel.
Doug Heye, a Republican strategist, said everyone he has spoken to at the congressional and fundraising levels “remains a strong supporter of Israel”.
Some Democratic lawmakers — including centrists such as Massachusetts Congress member Seth Moulton — have said they will not accept campaign donations from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in this election.
Aipac, America’s main pro-Israel lobbyist group, spent about $37.8mn through its Super Pac and affiliates on campaign donations and lobbying of both parties in the previous election cycle, according to OpenSecrets, a non-profit group that tracks money in US politics.
Republican leaders, including Trump, have expressed concerns about changing American sentiment towards Israel, arguing that the shift is driven by a rise in antisemitism.
“If you go back 10, 12, 15 years ago at the most, the strongest lobby in Washington was the Jewish lobby. It was Israel. That’s no longer true,” Trump warned in December. “You have to be very careful. You have a Congress in particular which is becoming antisemitic.”
Republican Senator Ted Cruz said late last year that he had “seen more antisemitism on the right than at any time in my life” during the second half of 2025. “If we refuse to denounce it, it could destroy the Republican Party just as it has destroyed the Democrat party.”
Heye said independents will prove critical in the midterms but their opinions on overseas countries are unlikely to sway votes. Every poll had shown that the primary issue for voters is consumer prices and the economy, he said.
“So we can talk about any other issue, but if it is not tied to what people spend and where the economy is, it becomes an ancillary issue when voters go to the polls,” Heye said.
Data visualisation by Martin Stabe