A new survey released Tuesday by the Pew Research Center showed U.S. Republicans to be far more supportive of Israel than their Democratic counterparts.
According to the survey, 79% of Republicans sympathize more with Israel than the Palestinians, compared with just 27% of Democrats. It said the partisan divide was the widest it has been since 1978, the earliest year it provided for comparison, when 49% of Republicans and 44% of Democrats sympathized with Israel over the Palestinians.
"Since 2001, the share of Republicans sympathizing more with Israel than the Palestinians has increased 29 percentage points, from 50% to 79%," the center said. "Over the same period, the share of Democrats saying this has declined 11 points, from 38% to 27%."
According to the survey, "42% say U.S. President Donald Trump is 'striking the right balance' in the situation in the Middle East, while 30% say he favors Israel too much."
At a similar point in Barack Obama's presidency, 47% of Americans said he had struck a proper balance in dealing with the Middle East; 21% said he sided too much with the Palestinians, while 7% said he favored Israel too much. "Today, nearly half of Democrats (46%) say Trump favors Israel too much, while just 21% say he is striking the right balance," the survey says.
"In 2010, more Republicans said Obama supported the Palestinians too much (38%) than said he struck the right balance."
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's leadership is also seen through a partisan lens: Fifty-two percent of Republicans view him favorably, compared to just 18% of Democrats. The share of liberal Democrats who sympathize more with Israel than the Palestinians has plummeted from 33% to 19% since 2016 alone, the survey found.
The survey said young people are more divided in their sympathies, with 32% of those under 30 favoring Israel, and 23% favoring the Palestinians. Respondents ages 50 to 64, for instance, favored Israel by a margin of 56% to 12%.
The Pew survey questioned 1,503 people from Jan. 10-15 and had a statistical margin of error of 2.9 percentage points.
