74% of Republicans Choose Israel Over Palestinians — Just 33% of Democrats

Israel?s Friends: Evangelical Christians from the U.S. participate in Sukkot festivities in Jerusalem. Image by getty images

By Josefin Dolsten January 16, 2017

NEW YORK (JTA) — The difference between the proportion of Republicans and Democrats who sympathize with Israel over the Palestinians is the largest it has been in surveys dating to 1978, according to a new report.

While 74 percent of Republicans sympathize more with Israel than the Palestinians, the number is 33 percent for Democrats, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted Jan. 4-9 and published Thursday.

Eleven percent of Republicans sympathize with the Palestinians over Israel, and 15 percent sympathize with neither, both sides or did not express a view. Among Democrats, those numbers were 31 percent and 35 percent, respectively.

The findings represent the first time in surveys conducted by the Pew Research Center that Democrats were about as likely to sympathize with the Palestinians as with Israel. Among “liberal Democrats,” 38 percent of respondents sympathized more with the Palestinians while 26 percent sympathized more with Israel.

The proportion of Republicans sympathizing more with Israel has risen since 1978 while it has fallen for Democrats. In that year, 49 percent of Republicans and 44 percent of Democrats sympathized more with the Jewish state, according to data from the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations obtained by Pew.

A majority of Democrats, 60 percent, said there is a way for Israel and a Palestinian state to coexist peacefully, while less than half of Republicans, 44 percent, believed that to be possible, the new Pew survey found.

A higher proportion of Republican and Republican-leaning respondents viewed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu favorably, 50 percent, than did their Democratic and Democratic-leaning counterparts, 21 percent.

Josefin Dolsten is a New York-based writer who has reported for the Forward, Jewish Telegraphic Agency, The Times of Israel and other Jewish publications. She currently works as an account director at Fenton Communications, supporting organizations that work to advance racial justice, LGBTQ+ equality, reproductive rights and more. Dolsten earned her B.A. in government from Cornell University and her M.A. in comparative religion and Jewish studies from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

This year, we have stood together in strength and sorrow. Our Forward team has worked around the clock to help you find clarity amid the chaos.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO