New poll shows how Americans' sympathies have shifted in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

That shift accelerated during the war in Gaza. Three years ago, 54% of Americans sympathized more with the Israelis, compared to 31% for the Palestinians.

Now, their support is about evenly balanced, with 41% saying their sympathies lie more with the Palestinians, and 36% saying the same about the Israelis.

The numbers reflect how support for Israel has become deeply contentious in the U.S., with profound implications for American politics and foreign policy. The changing sentiment has been largely driven by Democrats, who are now much more likely to sympathize with Palestinians. U.S. assistance to Israel has been a major dividing line in the party's primaries this year.

Gallup's data indicates the shift was already happening before Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, then increased during Israel's subsequent military operations in Gaza. The polling has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points, meaning sentiment toward Israelis and Palestinians are roughly even.

Democrats and independents

About two-thirds of Democrats now say their concerns lie more with the Palestinians, while only about 2 in 10 sympathize more with the Israelis. As recently as 2016, the picture looked very different: About half of Democrats sympathized more with the Israelis and only about one-quarter sympathized with the Palestinians.

Palestinian militants killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in the initial attack and took another 251 hostage, but the Israeli response has been widely seen as disproportionate, with Gaza health officials reporting more than 72,000 Palestinians killed, nearly half of them women and children. 

Democrats have expressed greater sympathy for the Palestinians than the Israelis since 2023, but Gallup's recent surveys show their support in the conflict has been tilting toward the Palestinians and away from the Israelis since around 2017.

Some of that early decline in sympathy appeared to be tied to disapproval of the right-leaning Israeli leader, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose favorability in the U.S. fell nearly 15 percentage points between 2017 and 2024, according to separate Gallup polling.

Netanyahu clashed with former President Barack Obama in the last year of his administration, then forged a warmer relationship with President Donald Trump, who delivered several victories to Netanyahu in his first term, including recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and Israel's sovereignty over the Golan Heights.

The conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians was a point of tension for Democrats during President Joe Biden's administration, as well as during the 2024 presidential election. 

Democrats' sympathy for the Palestinians intensified as the war progressed, Gallup's polling shows, and independents' views also shifted. This year, independents expressed more sympathy for the Palestinians than the Israelis for the first time in Gallup's trend. About 4 in 10 independents are more sympathetic toward the Palestinians. That's compared to about 3 in 10 for the Israelis, a new low.

Most Republicans, about 7 in 10, continue to side with Israel, but that is a slight downtick from about 8 in 10 before the start of the war.

Generational gaps

Younger adults — those 18 to 34 in this poll — are also increasingly sympathetic toward the Palestinians, according to the Gallup survey.

Younger Americans' sympathies have been shifting toward the Palestinians since around 2020, and reached a new high this year. About half of 18- to 34-year-olds say they have more sympathy for the Palestinians, compared to about a quarter who say that about the Israelis.

The new poll also found for the first time that middle-aged Americans, those 35 to 54, expressed more sympathy for the Palestinians than the Israelis — a reversal from last year. And while Americans over 55 are more sympathetic toward Israel, that gap is narrowing, too.

Palestinian state

About 6 in 10 U.S. adults, 57%, favor the establishment of an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, according to the new polling. 

In the last few years, there's been an uptick among Democrats and independents in support for the two-state solution. Now, about three-quarters of Democrats and roughly 6 in 10 independents say they support an independent Palestinian state. Only about one-third of Republicans say the same.

The opinions of the people who would be directly affected by a two-state solution are quite different. Only about 3 in 10 Israelis living in Israel and Palestinians living in the West Bank and east Jerusalem said they supported a solution in which an independent Palestinian state existed alongside Israel, according to the 2025 Gallup World Poll.

"On the ground, in the region, far fewer Israelis and Palestinians tell us that they are in favor of the two-state solution than Americans when asked a very similar question," said Benedict Vigers, a senior global news writer at Gallup. "There is that interesting sort of disconnect between the region itself and Americans' views toward it."

The Gallup poll was conducted Feb. 2-16 among 1,001 U.S. adults, aged 18 and older, using a sample drawn from Gallup's probability-based panel.