A plurality of American voters think Israel has gone too far in responding to the October attacks by Hamas, and a growing share believes the U.S. isn’t doing enough to help the Palestinian people, a new Wall Street Journal poll finds.
Some 42% of voters in the survey said Israel has gone too far in pursuing Hamas. A smaller share, 19%, said Israel hasn’t gone far enough, and 24% said Israel’s response to Hamas has been about right.
The Palestinian militant group killed more than 1,200 people in the Oct. 7 attacks, according to Israel, and abducted more than 240 hostages.Do you think Israel’s actions in the Gaza Stripin response to the October 7th attack byHamas have gone too far, not gone farenough, or been about right?Source: Wall Street Journal poll of 750 registeredvoters conducted Feb 21-28, 2024; margin of error: +/-3.6 pct. pts.42%241915Gone too farBeen about rightNot gone far enoughDon’t know/refused
The poll, conducted Feb. 21-28, also found rising sympathy for the Palestinian people amid Israel’s efforts to destroy Hamas, which have displaced tens of thousands of Gaza residents and caused a humanitarian crisis. The death toll in Gaza has surpassed 30,000 people, Palestinian health authorities say. The figures don’t distinguish between militants and civilians.
The war has created significant challenges for President Biden both in domestic politics and in diplomacy. Some senior aides to the president have become increasingly worried that his support for Israel’s war effort will cost him votes in November.
The new poll found that 60% of voters disapprove of Biden’s handling of the war, 8 points more than in December, with 31% approving of Biden’s actions. Rather than backing Biden, more than 100,000 people voted “uncommitted” in Michigan’s Democratic presidential primary last week, many in protest of the president’s Israel policy.
Biden administration relations with the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are strained and becoming more so amid severe challenges in delivering food and other aid to Gaza and Israeli plans to invade Rafah, where more than 1 million Palestinians, many of them displaced, now live.
“The longer this goes on, there is a shift toward more sympathy toward the Palestinians and less toward Israel,” said Democratic pollster Michael Bocian, who conducted the Journal poll with Republican Tony Fabrizio.
In the new survey, 33% of voters said the U.S. was doing too little to help Palestinians, up from 26% in the Journal’s December poll. About one-quarter of voters said the U.S. was doing too much for Palestinians, with the same share saying the U.S. was doing the right amount.
Some 30% said the U.S. was doing too much to help the Israeli people, compared with 22% who said so in December. The share saying the U.S. was doing too little was unchanged, at 25%.
In a noteworthy development, an age gap in views of Israel seems to be narrowing, with older Democrats matching younger Democrats in their wariness of Israel’s actions.
Some 40% of Democrats under age 40 said the U.S. was doing too much to help the Israeli people, compared with 33% of Democrats ages 40 and older—a 7-point difference. In December, that gap had been 24 points.
Among Democrats ages 40 and older, 71% said Israel had gone too far in responding to Hamas, essentially identical to the share of Democrats under age 40.
Views of the war differ sharply by political party. Some 16% of Republicans say Israel has gone too far in responding to Hamas, compared with the 70% of Democrats.
The Journal poll interviewed 1,500 registered voters by cellphone and landline phone, with some respondents reached by text and invited to take the survey online. The margin of error for the full sample is plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.
Aaron Zitner is a reporter and editor in The Wall Street Journal's Washington bureau, focusing largely on how politics are driven by demographic and economic change. He also reports on trends in polling. Earlier, he was the Journal's national politics editor.
