How Do Americans Feel About Israel, Palestine, Jews, And Muslims?
Much has been made about young Americans’ reactions to the war between Israel and Hamas, as well as its implications for antisemitism and Islamophobia. A series of polls from October and December 2023, for example, reported that those between 18 and 24 were split 50/50 on whether they supported Israel or Hamas. In fact, this result gained so much traction that candidate for the GOP nomination for president, Vivek Ramaswamy cited it at a campaign event in November 2023. However, national surveys usually lack the sample size to confidently report percentages of small subgroups, like 18 to 24 year olds, raising questions about the validity of findings like these. Between December 21, 2023 and January 29, 2024, we surveyed 30,460 individuals aged 18 and older across all 50 states plus the District of Columbia. We included feeling thermometers for Israel, Palestine, Jews, and Muslims, asking people to separately rate how they feel about each group on a 0 to 100 scale, where 0 indicates feeling very unfavorable or cold, 50 indicates not feeling particularly warm or cold toward that group, and 100 indicates feeling very favorable or warm. Our survey’s sample size allows us to zoom in on subgroups within the population. For instance, it included 3,294 Americans between ages 18 and 24. This allows us to look within this age group and break young Americans down by partisanship, as our survey includes 1101 18-24-year-old Democrats and 676 18-24-year-old Republicans. In this report, we examine how responses to these four thermometer ratings varied by age, race, education, religion, and partisanship, as well as how the different thermometer scores are correlated with one another.
KEY FINDINGS
