Pro-Palestinian supporters gathered on Dec. 17 in Washington, D.C. Photo by Getty Images

By Benyamin Cohen December 19, 2023

Nearly half of young American voters, 46%, said they sympathize more with the Palestinians than with Israel, according to a poll published Tuesday — far more than the 27% who sided with the Jewish state. This is in stark contrast to voters overall, where the poll found 47% sympathize more with Israel and 20% with the Palestinians.

The survey of 1,016 registered voters, released Tuesday morning, was conducted by The New York Times and Siena College from Dec. 10 to 14. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

The poll also shows that, for the first time, young voters prefer former President Donald Trump to President Joe Biden, 49% to 43%. The Times cites the war as one explanation for the shift. Among voters ages 18 to 29, the poll found, 49% think Trump would do a better job on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, compared to 30% who prefer Biden’s approach.

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“It’s possible that the kinds of young voters opposed to Israel already opposed Mr. Biden back before the war,” Nate Cohn, the chief political analyst of the Times, wrote in his analysis of the poll. “That can’t be ruled out. But it’s still evidence that opposition to the war itself is probably contributing to Mr. Biden’s unusual weakness among young voters.”

The poll included a number of other data points that showed younger voters’ diverging opinions on Israel from the electorate overall, including:

• 55% oppose providing additional economic and military support for Israel, compared to 38% overall.
• 59% don’t think Israel is seriously interested in a peaceful solution to its conflict with Palestinians, compared to 38% overall.
• 67% think Israel should stop its current military campaign, even if not all Israeli hostages have been released, compared to 44% overall.
• 74% believe Israel is not taking enough precautions to avoid civilian casualties, compared to 48% overall.
• 48% believe Israel is intentionally killing civilians, more than twice the 22% among all voters surveyed.

The new poll joins other recent surveys that have chronicled a shift among younger voters away from generations of U.S. support for the Jewish state since its founding in 1948. A Harvard CAPS/Harris poll conducted last week found that 51% of those 18 to 24 think Israel should be “ended and given to Hamas and the Palestinians.”

The Israel-Palestinian conflict is not the only Jewish topic where younger Americans diverge from older generations. A study released this month by YouGov and The Economist found that 1 in 5 young Americans believe the Holocaust is a myth, compared to 7% of Americans overall.

The TikTok generation

Some analysts have suggested the shift is rooted in the sources young people rely on for news. The largest contingent of those 18 to 29 in the Times/Siena poll, 35%, said they consume news on social media, with 72% using TikTok. 

“Those who identify as regular users of TikTok were the most adamant in their criticism” of Israel, the Times noted, a platform where “brutal images of slain Palestinians bombard youthful eyes.”

More than two-thirds of TikTok users are ages 18 to 34. On that platform, between Oct. 23 and 30, the hashtag #standwithpalestine was viewed 285 million times compared to #standwithisrael at 64 million. A study by the Humanz company, meanwhile, found 109 billion posts on TikTok and Instagram with pro-Palestinian hashtags, 15 times the 7 billion with pro-Israel ones, during a month of the war.

Asked about the poll on CNN Tuesday, Sen. John Fetterman, a Pennsylvania Democrat who has been a strong supporter of Israel during the war, said: “If you’re getting your perspective on the world on TikTok, it’s going to tend to be kinda warped.“

“It’s been very clear that Israel would very much want there to be peace,” Fetterman added. “I really believe the president is very much on the right side” of this issue, he said. “Sometimes you may alienate some voters, but it is really most important to be on the right side on that.”

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