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YouGov USA

June 16-18, 2024

The Details

1. For the second month in a row, Israel has not lost sympathy, but we still cannot draw any major conclusions from this poll due to the change being within the margin of error (just 1%).

  • 26% sympathize equally with both sides (down 1% from May), compared to 33% (up 1% from May) sympathizing more with Israel and 16% (also up 1% from May) with Palestinians.

  • 25% (up 1% from the last poll) of Americans are unsure about which side they have more sympathy for.

2. The Israel-Hamas conflict continues to be viewed through a partisan lens in American politics.

  • The partisan divide in perception reveals that the conflict is highly politicized in American discourse, with 46% of Democrats viewing Israel's response as too harsh compared to only 10% of Republicans.

3. Shifting aid sentiment indicates growing skepticism about U.S. support for Israel's military actions.

  • 33% of Americans want to decrease military aid to Israel and only 19% want to increase it.

  • A quarter of Americans say it should maintain the same amount of military aid to Israel, and 23% aren't sure.

  • In terms of humanitarian aid to the Palestinians, Americans are split fairly equally between favoring more aid to be sent, favoring less to be sent, maintaining the same amount and unsure about the entire issue.

4. More Americans think Israel's actions in Gaza are too harsh than not harsh enough. But taken together with those who think the response is about right, American sentiment is not overtly negative about the Israeli government's response to the October 7 events.

  • 30% think the government's response in Gaza is too harsh, 17% think it's not harsh enough, 23% think the response is about right, and 31% are unsure. 

  • Looking at the numbers differently, 40% of Americans think the response is either about right or not harsh enough, 30% think it's too harsh and the remainder aren't sure.

5. Legal ambiguity surrounds Israel's actions in Gaza, as 33% of Americans say Israel has violated international law, while 29% say it hasn't.

  • American opinion on this matter is split fairly equally on this matter too - just under a third think Israel's actions do not violate international law, anotehr third think they do, and the remaining third is unsure.

Key Takeaways

In May, for the first time since February, sympathy for Israel did not drop, and in the current poll, we see this trend continue.  In fact, Americans are now 1% more sympathetic towards Israel (33%). Time will tell if this is indeed a welcome trend or just an anomaly.

A significant portion (30%) of Americans view Israel's response to the Hamas attack as too harsh, while only 17% say it's not harsh enough. However, when looking at the full picture, we see that Americans are not as damning of Israel's actions as it may appear.

Americans are split on whether Israel has violated international law in Gaza, with 33% saying it has and 29% saying it hasn't. Again, while we'd prefer to see better numbers in Israel's favor, it's not as bad as it "feels" when reading the mainstream media and scrolling through social media feeds.

Methodology

The poll was conducted among 1,600 U.S. adult citizens from June 16-18, 2024, using YouGov's opt-in panel with stratified sampling and weighting to be representative of the U.S. adult citizen population.

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