Only Americans Who Still View Israel Favorably Are Old Republicans, New Poll Shows
Republicans over the age of 50 still have an overwhelming majority of favorable views of Israel – unlike younger Republican voters and Democrats of all ages.
Sixty percent of American adults have a very or somewhat unfavorable view of Israel, including 80% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents and 41% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, according to a Pew Research poll released Tuesday. However, although the majority of Republicans still view the US ally in a positive light, the Republican Party is sharply divided along age lines, with now a majority – 57% – of Republicans aged 18 to 49 having an unfavorable view of Israel, while only 24% of Republicans over 50 share this view. (RELATED: Majority of Republicans say Israel influences US foreign policy too much, weeks after Iran war begins)
Among Democrats, there was great parity between voters’ positions on Israel in the two age cohorts, with 84% of Democrats 49 and younger and 76% of Democrats 50 and older saying they have a negative view of Israel. The poll did not provide a separate category for independents and instead grouped independent voters with the party they leaned toward.
The release of the investigation comes a day after the New York Times (NYT) published an explosive report claiming that Israeli leaders cajoled President Donald Trump into attacking Iran on February 28 by laying out a plan that his own CIA director called “far-fetched.”
The only remaining pro-Israel demographic in the United States is Republicans over 50. https://t.co/Pc2Gt6AzSP pic.twitter.com/16zjzM9Ipx
-Zachary Foster (@_ZachFoster) April 7, 2026
Republican strategist and former Trump White House official Mike McKenna told the Daily Caller News Foundation that the survey results are “not terribly surprising.”
“We are now 80 years and three generations into the brave new nation-state of Israel and the continuing threats to its very existence,” McKenna told DCNF. “They are now a nuclear power and the most formidable regional military power in their neighborhood. It’s hard to find support from the biggest, baddest, best-connected kid on the block.”
“It doesn’t help that there appears to be no moderating influence. Israel appears to have drawn the United States into the conflict with Iran, and I suspect that most Americans believe that the reason we have been involved in conflicts in the Middle East for 40 years now is directly linked to Israel,” he added.
Weeks before the United States and Israel launched joint strikes against Iran to start war, Gen. Dan Caine, the Trump-appointed chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told fellow administration officials that Israeli “standard operating procedure” is to “oversell,” according to Tuesday’s New York Times report. Secretary of State Marco Rubio then added that Israel’s assertion to the United States that the two countries could achieve Iranian regime change was “bullshit.”
“Young people’s skepticism is no mystery,” McKenna continued. “They watched us at war in the Middle East for most of their lives. What did we get in return? Not much.”
Similarly, 58% of Republicans aged 18 to 49 said they had “not too much” or “not at all” confidence in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ability to “do the right thing regarding world affairs,” according to the Pew poll released Tuesday.
On the other hand, 66% of Republicans aged 50 and over surveyed had “a little” or “a lot” of confidence in the 76-year-old foreign leader. Only 10% of Democrats ages 18 to 49 and 15% of Democrats ages 50 and older agreed.
• 60% of American adults now have an unfavorable view of Israel 🇮🇱.
• This is an increase from 53% last year and 42% in 2022.
• In both political parties, a majority of adults under 50 have a negative view of Israel. (84% of Democrats, 57% of Republicans)
👉🏻 https://t.co/NKFKwERQjY pic.twitter.com/envW5Gr2hY
– Frank Luntz (@FrankLuntz) April 8, 2026
When Pew asked respondents to share their views on Israel in March 2025, 53% of all American adults surveyed had a favorable view of the country, while 45% had an unfavorable view. However, in March 2022 – a year and a half before Hamas’ surprise attack on Israel on October 7 – a majority of American adults (55%) said they saw the majority-Jewish country in a favorable light, according to a Pew poll from that year. (RELATED: Israel sold Trump on war with a flimsy intelligence case)
Only 53% of Democrats told Pew in 2022 that they had a negative view of Israel – a difference of 27 percentage points from four years later.
From March 23 to 29, research firm SSRS surveyed its American Trends Panel (ATP) of 3,507 randomly selected adults across the United States. Of those surveyed, 3,377 were interviewed online and the remaining 130 by telephone. The survey includes a weighted oversample of Muslim, Jewish, and non-Hispanic Asian respondents. The 2026 Pew survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 1.9 percentage points.
Fifty-one percent of likely Republicans and 74 percent of Democrats said Israel has “too much influence on U.S. foreign policy,” according to a Democracy Institute poll of likely U.S. voters released in late March.
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